Reflecting on 2022, anticipating 2023

The end of 2022 is approaching and we’re all looking forward to some well earned time off and holiday celebrations. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukah or the Winter Solstice it’s a time of year to get together for some quality time with our nearest and dearest.

It’s also a time to reflect, on the achievements of the year, and where they might take us next. We are only part way through our “year of reinvention”: the rebirth of LiveCode as LiveCode 10 announced in spring this year. 

What we did in 2022

Before I get all excited about LiveCode 10, lets have a quick look back. Some milestones in numbers from 2022:

• 1 three day online conference
• 3 Stable releases of LiveCode 9 versions
• 4 new hires to the team
• 11 test releases including 4 of LiveCode 10
• 12 Enhancements for LiveCode acquired
• 24 LiveCode Global sessions held
• 82, our averaged NPS score for the year
• 274 bug fixes and features added
• Thousands of new people tried LiveCode
• 11226 use list and forum posts
• 17,000 (very approximately!) man hours spent on LiveCode development. A record!
• 0 partridges placed in pear trees

Major projects we’re working on include the Script Compiler, which is going to make LiveCode leaner, meaner, and more secure than ever before. This is getting close to generating actual low-level code now, so we should get to find out how fast we can make LiveCode run soon! It’s been a massive project, with some very tricky internal footwork to be completed, but it is going to be worth the wait. Other projects include the IDE rework, the Web project and our backend Cloud Service which are all coming along nicely, ready to form a part of LiveCode 10.

What is LiveCode 10? 

Why is it special, why are we so excited about it? There is still a large pile of nuts, bolts and cogs on the machine room floor, but we’ve more programmers than ever before hard at work assembling it into the most revolutionary release of LiveCode you’ve seen since 1.0. LiveCode 10 won’t just be a better LiveCode. It will be a step change.

No-code LiveCode?

As the low code and no code movements gather pace, we are not so much hitching our wagon to that star, as chipping away the outer crust to reveal the diamond that LiveCode always has been. LiveCode is evolving into something beautiful, new and unique. As more and more people realise that coding is not an obscure and arcane art, the time has come for a beautiful, English-like, coding language, with a drag and drop interface and a shiny new accessible web editor. A perfect mix of easy to drop into, no-code interface and a powerful, flexible but above all understandable language that lets you go further, faster, than any no-code solution can. Critically, LiveCode 10 will be as easy to access as any other low-code or no-code offering out there, from the getgo. If some no-code solutions might be thought of as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, hiding the reality of needing to learn some really hard languages to progress your app past the baby steps stage, LiveCode 10 is a shining star hiding under the cloak of easy access. Yes, you can get started with just drag and drop. And then, behold, you can actually create a unique and full featured app without any prior coding experience. It’s beautiful.

LiveCode Web

How often do you work entirely disconnected from the World Wide Web these days? Which is the most used app on your device? If you said frequently, and didn’t say “a browser” to those questions… well, maybe you are working for Santa in Lapland. (Though I’m not really sure how he gets all his gifts these day, maybe on Amazon?) For an awful lot of people, offline is the stuff of nightmares and browsers are their interface to the world. LiveCode 10 will live in that world and introduce a whole new generation to the best way to create apps. It will not just deploy to the web as Web apps, but it will let you actually create apps right there in the browser. A game changer.  We can’t wait to unleash it in a web portal near you, in 2023. 

Widgets and Connectors

We will be creating a bunch of new widgets and API connectors so that your LiveCode experience “out of the box” is first class. We are aiming to cover all the common app building blocks with for example, a drag and drop widget for common login functionality, a list widget for easy lists, a table to just drop in, a calendar, connectors for Paypal, Mailchimp, Twitter… all those things that you really don’t need or want to write from scratch. Plus we’re really excited about the new Script Widgets functionality, so all you great LiveCoders out there can easily add your own custom widgets!

LiveCode Learning

As part of LiveCode 10, we have a massive Learning project on the go. Our aim is to pull together all the resources we already have, plus add some new ones documenting all the lovely new features in 10, all in one easy to access portal. There will be videos, written docs, step by step lessons, overviews and sample stacks. Everything you could want and we can think of, all pulled into one place for your convenience. We’ll be looking for feedback on this as we get the pieces put together and start releasing it. 

The LiveCode Team

LiveCode 10 is an ambitious project. Here at LiveCode we are no stranger to ambition! We couldn’t pull it off without a fabulous team. This year we’ve welcomed four new members to the LiveCode family, Holly, Ben, Ruaridh and Radha. They have settled right in and are already contributing great work to LiveCode 10. 

Some of you might have noticed the work Radha is doing to raise our profile on social media – its pulling in new users already. When I asked him about his time so far at LiveCode he had this to say:

“It has been a great learning curve for me in the last 3 months in LiveCode. It’s been so exciting reworking the social media platforms for LiveCode and meeting with LiveCoder’s for customer testimonials. Getting to know where our users are, and reaching out to them via social media is something great and I’m looking forward to a great 2023.”

Holly has been getting stuck in to the Web IDE. I asked her what she is most excited by in her work at present.

“My favourite is either the option to have the center panel content (which is the panels with the script editor and the message box) shown on the right hand side of the screen or the new login and loading pages for the web IDE which are a big aesthetic improvement from before.”

Ruaridh has been working on our brand new cloud backend.

“I find it pretty interesting (working on the) API, which is what that the IDE and some of the admin tools will interact with to get the information that you are looking for. That could be when you save or retrieve a stack it will call the server to get or save the stack that is desired, when you login it will check that the details match or if they exist so the user can proceed, or when you edit any of your account information.”

Ben had this to say when asked about his most interesting work:

Definitely the work I’ve done for the Web IDE – either the tools palette or project browser. Both of them have been fun to do, but required more work than I first thought which made it challenging and fun 🙂

Welcome to the team guys and gal, it’s great to have you on board.

How close are we to liftoff?

If you’ve been with us for a while you will know, I never give release dates. I’m not going to tell you when we’ll be ready to unleash LiveCode 10! But in the course of 2022 we’ve come a long long way. Massive amounts of work have been done in every area, from deep in the engine to the IDE, not forgetting the crucial area of outreach and marketing. There is still a lot to do, but its taking shape already. Here is a tantalizing glimpse of the future:

2023 is going to be great

I hope I’ve been able to convey some of the excitement we’re feeling here about LiveCode 10, and why. It is a joy to see the interface being brought right up to date. It’s truly thrilling to start seeing it working directly in the browser. I’ve not even touched on the cloud backend and why that is such an essential part of the whole – finally you’ll be able to just bring in your data and use it, without thinking about where you will host it or how you will manage it. LiveCode 10 keeps everything that is great about LiveCode, and brings it to a new audience, polished, modern and ready to knock your socks off. We can’t wait to see it thrilling a new generation of LiveCoders.

Happy Holidays from the whole team!