Dear friends,
I have been carefully reading your latest emails and wanted to share
with you some “New Year” reflections.
These days I have been fighting with several Windows and Linux servers,
and it made me think about how much I miss those NetWare servers from
the 80s and 90s, and operating systems like MS-DOS or the first versions
of Windows NT (3.51 and 4.0): robust, simple systems, without activation
or dependencies on the Internet.
How everything has changed. The complexity of operating systems and
software has multiplied a thousandfold. Traditional RAD tools such as
Visual Basic Classic, or Borland’s old Turbo Pascal and Turbo C, have
disappeared. Today, the last truly professional “live” RAD environments
are Lazarus IDE and LiveCode.
I deeply miss that simple way of programming—those times when the owner
of a personal computer was also its programmer, and when small
neighborhood businesses developed their own applications for management,
billing, inventory, and so on. Those were good times.
With the arrival of the Internet, large manufacturers such as Microsoft
and Apple pushed amateur programmers out of the ecosystem and opted
instead for their own ultra-specialized development platforms.
LiveCode is a reminder of those days when a twelve-year-old boy could
spend an entire afternoon in front of his computer, trying to understand
how it worked and how to exploit its possibilities to the fullest. Those
were the days of thick paper manuals, connections to BBSs, and arguments
with our parents because we were constantly using the modem.
I honestly don’t know how to help LiveCode Ltd. At the time, I purchased
an Indy subscription and tried to collaborate as much as I could, but
programming is only a very small part of my income. I currently work as
a technology director at a high school in New York, and before that I
spent 20 years running my own IT company in Spain.
What I am certain about is that LiveCode must continue. Because
somewhere in the world, there is probably a child who feels the need to
use a computer for something other than social media and video games.
And when that child wants to learn how to program, and is confronted
with the gigantic crap pile of complexity that modern graphical
programming has become, perhaps—by chance—he or she will discover
LiveCode and realize that controlling a computer and making the most of
it can still be simple and fun.
A hug to everyone, and Happy New Year!
Heriberto Torrado
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