We at MakeShyft R.D.A we have been the happy recipients of some pretty epic ideas to put into our R.D.A pipeline. However, not one of them is small, all of them seemed to require much more than we had. Mostly, more resources and more team members. By April of 2013, having spent the better part of 2 years developing the ideas in our pipeline, we found ourselves at a crossroads. It was time to narrow our focus on one of the projects and to bring it to fruition. We decided that the most feasible idea was to work on developing the first version of the U.M.P. It was the project which required the least amount of resources and manpower. On April 10th 2013, I sat down to do a Google search to find a cross platform development tool which we could use to build the U.M.P. After a few hours of searching and reading the descriptions and examples of the various platforms, it seemed like it wasn't going to be very straightforward at all. There was no platform that encompassed everything that was needed to build the U.M.P. Platforms and languages would need to be combined to have any hope of building a working prototype. Learning multiple platforms was not something we wanted to do. Later that evening, our team-member, friend, & roommate Ryan sent me a link to "Livecode goes Open-Source"...... saying "This might come in handy one day".... Come in handy one day???? ... that was the understatement of the century :) Without even clicking on it, I freaked out with joy. I just knew this is what I was searching for earlier in the day. This was the answer, this was our platform. Once I clicked on it and began reading about it, it confirmed that, this relatively unknown platform is perfect what what our company required to go full speed ahead with building the U.M.P and the projects in our pipeline. Tears of Joy were flowing that day. Literally. Livecode has been around since the 1980's (as Hypercard) and is now called Livecode. Why Livecode?
To build the U.M.P we required a platform that was sufficiently quick, easy to learn, and capable of covering every aspect of what needed to be built. Mainly, a user interface, a file format, and a back-end full of functions and algorithms. Even though I hadn't really programmed much, I began working on the U.M.P right away, I didn't play around with it, I didn't have to ease my way in. The name of my first livecode file was "UMP1.livecode". I don't know if any other platform in the world is simple and robust enough to let me do that. Livecode is unique in the following ways:
Building the U.M.P is no small task, it is not your average - single functionality app. It is a full platform with a great many components. For example, we created an U.M.P file format using Livecode's built in SQLite support driver. As of our first internal version 0.97, the UMP has:
If you have an idea for an app, LiveCode is an incredible, mature, robust, full-featured software development platform. Give it a try. We Love LiveCode....and our work with it has just begun, we are on board, all-in, and we will do everything in our power to raise awareness of the platform. This is part of the purpose of writing this blog. Thank you to the dedicated team at LiveCode Ltd in Edinburgh, Scotland. by Tom Glod Lead Developer @ MakeShyft R.D.A Comments are closed.
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