Peter Bogdanoff wrote:
> Richard,
>
> This is a great explanation!
>
> You didn't go on long enough!
Thanks for the encouraging works, and thanks to John Balgenorth for his
kind comment as well.
I often wonder whether those long posts are wasting too much time in
details people already know, so it's very helpful to know that at least
a few find them useful.
In so many areas of life I find that I can turn up many tutorials on
things I need to learn, but until I find the one that gives me a
conceptual framework I can hook into, all those details are just lost on me.
So for myself I've found that grokking the gestalt of a problem is
critical before any further learning can take place.
I can't tell you how helpful it is to hear that others have the same
learning mode. This will help guide my future efforts with learning
materials for LiveCode.
> I would LOVE a good reference book/ebook/application on using LC,
> LC server, and web services in general.
>
> I would easily pay $100 for such a thing if it really got me going
> in this field. I know LC desktop pretty well but have all sorts of
> needs for this kind of thing, but what available is (for me) a
> daunting conglomeration of resources.
Be careful what you ask for: I've discussed producing learning
materials for LiveCode with a couple publishers.
The problem at the moment is that I'm being a jerk about it, but
hopefully in a way that you'll agree is worth pursuing: I want the
learning materials to be freely available for everyone.
Very hard to find a publisher who will pay an advance with no
opportunity for a return on that investment. :)
I may be persuaded to take a more conventional path on this, but right
now I'm of the opinion that LiveCode is too important to the world to
limit opportunities for learning to use it well behind a paywall.
Maybe I'm just a pie-eyed dreamer, but I honestly believe LiveCode is a
liberating force in a world increasingly run by computing machines where
an ever-smaller percentage of people using those machines know how they
work or can make them work as they want them to.
LiveCode can turn that around, providing computing literacy that's very
empowering and deeply satisfying.
If I can help that along I would be happy to do so, and putting the
sorts of things I might otherwise spread out across dozens of TL/DR
posts here into one handy volume would if nothing else help them be more
findable.
Of course, in the meantime I have bills to pay like everyone else, so
the process has been slow-going. And maybe the solution is to just
publish it myself, accepting donations to help offset the expense.
All that will take time - even if I had a healthy advance from a
publisher right now my client workload prevents me from making these
tutorials a priority right now.
So in the meantime, two absolutely wonderful resources are already here.
For a wide range of general LC info, Devin Assay's collection of
LiveCode wisdom is a solid starting point:
<http://livecode.byu.edu/>
For server-related stuff, Simon's LiveCode Server site is great:
<http://activethought.net/livecode-server/introduction/>
And when you've built enough with LiveCode Server that you're ready to
create very sophisticated server systems, Ralf has done most of the
heavy lifting for us with his marvelously well executed RevIgniter
server framework:
<http://revigniter.com/>
Related, Bill Prothero wrote:
> I think it would be very hard to justify the effort required for
> a livecode book, given all of the changes in livecode on the horizon.
> Keeping it up to date would be a huge effort, too.
I've done enough tech editing for authors of computing books to
appreciate both concerns, but I also feel those risks can be mitigated.
I've met very few tech authors whose books have brought in as much
revenue as consulting work. All the good books are labors of love, and
for most of them that's all they'll ever be, with any advance a
publisher offers barely enough to pay for the food and electricity
needed to keep the writing going.
But still they get written, because the world is full of love. :)
They're useful to read, and as satisfying to write as useful code.
Updating can be kept to a minimum by focusing on things not addressed in
the docs included in the IDE. After all, the included docs are the one
set of learning materials we can expect 100% of the audience to have.
They absolutely must be complete, accurate, and clear.
There's room for other learning materials to focus on specific aspects
of LiveCode; the language is deep enough and broad enough that there are
many things outside the scope of the core docs well worth writing.
But to get started with productive use of LiveCode, we have to be able
to rely on the included docs. The world depends on this. This is why I
keep asking for specifics anytime there are complaints about the docs -
when we take the time to file bug reports against the docs we can
resolve those, and thankfully we have a substantial and growing
community documentation team we'll be kicking off soon to help those
efforts along.
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World Systems
Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
____________________________________________________________________
ambassa...@fourthworld.com http://www.FourthWorld.com
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