Hacker News Reader

Comment by airfoil | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I'm building a game/simulation so I don't need a "native" UI. I've played with QML a bit and it's very nice to work with. I've also discovered that PyQt5 can be deployed to mobile so the combination of PyQt and QML might be the best of all worlds for me (I love Python).

Based on your reply it looks like LiveCode doesn't provide a productivity advantage over Qt/QML. What was a pain in the ass about LiveCode/RunRev?

View on HN

It's a strange language and strange framework. Not in a good way, where after you've been using it awhile you start to appreciate it, but in a bad way, where the more you use it the more annoyed you get.

A few examples, working from slightly hazy memory…

You can't just say

   foo.height = boo.height

You have to say something like

   set the height of field "foo" to the height of field "boo"

Instead of

   x = 5

You write

   put 5 into x

And so on.

There's no advantage to the LiveCode language, except perhaps for small children; it's just stupidly verbose.

It's not object-oriented, you can't define classes and instantiate objects. (Some people have tried to hack together object-like facilities, but those are non-standard and cumbersome.)

Everything (i.e., most things) is either a field or a button. Do you have a listbox in your UI? You don't refer to it as a listbox — there's no control called listbox — you refer to it as "field 'listbox'" — a minor irritant, but when there are dozens of such minor irritants, it adds up.

I gather there are thousands of happy LiveCode developers, so obviously my opinion is not gospel, but I do not envy LiveCode developers at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com