1. What is LiveCode? Who uses it?

2. How Easy is it? 

3. What  Apps and Programs can you write with it?

LiveCode is an easy, English-like, object-oriented, event-driven programming language. Despite it's simplicity, it is a powerful, full featured language with over 2,000 commands and behaviors. It is used by many corporations, government agencies, academic institutions and school systems. 

The community version is free, open source and actively being enhanced and extended. It deploys programs on every platform including Windows, OS/X, Linux, iOS, Android and even HTML as standalone. (Standalone means that it will run on any computer. You do not need to have or install LiveCode to run them). The newest version has a Foreign Function Interface (FFI) allowing it to run native Javascript and Java Classes. More interfaces are coming

    Who is using it? - Some of the customers using it.(includes NASA, KLM Airlines, Univ. of Vienna, BYU,  NY Law School, etc)
    Review of It - Review: It's Freaking Incredible

    Turing Festival - Presentation at the Turing Festival where the CEO builds an app in 3 minutes

    KickStarter Project - This is how the Open Source version started

    What_Is_LiveCode?  - An interesting take on LiveCode

    OpenSource - Good intro story to LiveCode - 

    PCWorld Review - another review ... but there are others better and newer (Do a Google Search)

Livecode is basically English commands. Even though it is a powerful, full-featured, object-oriented and event-driven language, it is easy to read, write and debug. It is like writing in psuedo-code. You can concentrate on the program and not the language.

    You program in LiveCode as you do with other languages. The syntax is relaxed and the command set is English-like.

    A few of the commands in LiveCode: (See how English-like they are, it is just like talking. Yes, programming can be that easy)

 ask "What is your name?"

        if yourAnswer is "Yes" then do this else do that

        put 0 into field "score"

        add 10 to field "score"

        subtract 10 from field "score"

        hide image "egg"

        show image "chick"

        play "birdChirping.wav"

        move image "bird" to 100,238 in 2 secs

        wait 3 secs

        repeat 10 times

        repeat from 10 down to 1

        go to card "instructions"

        answer "Do you want to play?" with "Yes" or "No"

        intersect (image "arrow" , image "apple")

        revSpeak ("Good morning, how are you today.")

The following is actual code that will run on PC computers, Apple computers, Linux computers, iOS devices (iPhone, iPad) and Android devices (smartphones, tablets)  or in a web browser. These were all written by high school students (grades 9-12, ages 13-17).

Not knowing the language, look at the actual examples below and see if you can understand what is going on.

on openCard
    put 10 into field "tries left"
end openCard

on GuessMyNumber
     local myNum, guess                                                                      (these are variables where we save the original number and the guesses)
     put random(100) into myNum                                                        (this has the computer pick a random number between 1 and 100)
     answer "I am thinking of a number from 1 to 100, would you like to try to guess it in 10                               tries?" with "No" or "Yes"
     if it is "Yes" then
          repeat for 10 times
                 ask "Try again, what is your guess?"
                 put it into guess
                 if guess < myNum then answer "Your answer is too low, guess higher"
                 if guess > myNum then answer "Your answer is too high, guess lower"
                 if guess = myNum then
                        answer "Good job, you guessed it"
                        exit GuessMyNumber
                end if
                subtract 1 from field "tries left"
         end repeat
    end if
    answer "10 guesses are up. The answer was " & theNumber

    put 10 into field "tries left"

end openCard

In this first screen, you have to match the animals on the right to the ones on the left. For each animal, you hold the mouse button down to drag it and release the button to "drop" it. If you drop it in the wrong place, it just goes back to it's start

                 

Here is all the code that you need:

    (this code goes on the cow)

        on mouseDown

            grab me

        end mouseDown

        on mouseUp

            if intersect ( image "cow 1" , image "cow 2") then    

                // if you dropped "cow 1" on to "cow 2", then you got it right

                answer "Good job. You matched the cows"

            else

                // if not correct, move "cow 1" back to the start - to location 200,200

                move the image "cow 1" to 200,200                                          

            end if

        end mouseUp

        on mouseDown

             grab me

        end mouseDown

        on mouseUp

            if intersect ( image "pig 1" , image "pig 2") then

                answer "Good job. You matched the pigs"

            else

                 move the image "pig 1" to 200,300

            end if

        end mouseUp

In this second screen, you have to put the animals on the right with its friends on the left. For each animal, you hold the mouse button down to drag it and release the button to "drop" it. If you drop it in the wrong place, it just goes back to it's start

                   

(this code goes on the card)

on mouseDown

    grab me

end mouseDown

on mouseUp

    if intersect ( image "sheep" , graphic "rectangle 1") then

        answer "Good job."

    else

        move the image "sheep" to 200,100

    end if

    if intersect ( image "chick" , graphic "rectangle 2") then

        answer "Good job."

    else

        move the image "chick" to 200,200

    end if

    if intersect ( image "sheep" , graphic "rectangle 3") then

        answer "Good job."

    else

        move the image "sheep" to 200,300

    end if

end mouseUp

         You use the cursor (arrow) keys on the keyboard to move the mouse. If you run into a wall of the maze, it goes back to the start. The object is to get to the cheese. The maze is hand drawn with lines which are then "grouped" into a group called "maze"

                                   

(this code goes on the card)

    on arrowKey x

        if x = "right" then                                                                                             
             //  if you pressed the right arrow key, move the mouse right +1

            set the right of image "mouse" to the right of image "mouse" + 1              

        end if

        if x = "left" then                                                                                         

            //  if you pressed the left arrow key, move the mouse left -1

            set the left of image "mouse" to the left of image "mouse" - 1

        end if

        if x = "up" then

            set the top of image "mouse" to the top of image "mouse" - 1

        end if

        if x = "down" then

            set the bottom of image "mouse" to the bottom of image "mouse" + 1

        end if

       if intersect (image "mouse" , group "maze" )  then

          move the image "mouse" to 74,27 in 1 sec

       end if

       if intersect (image "mouse" , image "cheese" )  then

              answer "Hooray, You Win !!)

       end if

    end arrowKey

    on arrowKey x

        if x = "right" then

            set the right of image "frog" to the right of image "frog" + 1

        end if

        if x = "left" then

            set the left of image "frog" to the left of image "frog" - 1

        end if

        if x = "up" then

            set the top of image "frog" to the top of image "frog" - 1

        end if

        if x = "down" then

            set the bottom of image "frog" to the bottom of image "frog" + 1

        end if

       if intersect (image "frog" , image "car" )  then

                answer "You lose, play again? " with "No" or "Yes"

                if it is "Yes" then 

                        move the image "frog" to 100,50 

               else

                        quit

              endif

       end if

    end arrowKey

on moveCars

     set the left of image "car" to the left of image "car" - 2

     if the left of image "car" < 0 then

         set the left of image "car" to the right of the card "road"

    end if

    send "moveCars" to me in 10 millisecs

end moveCars

on mouseUp
       local x
       //  get the latest quotes from Yahoo finance website 
       put url "http://finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=AAPL&f=nbgh" into x      
       put item 1 of line 1 of x into the field "NameAns"
       put item 2 of line 1 of x into the field "BidAns"
       put item 3 of line 1 of x into the field "HighAns"
       put item 4 of line 1 of x into the field "LowAns"   
end mouseUp

For more examples and code samples go here