1. To support old hardware means you have to bloat the project, which means each new developer you attract to the project has to download a bunch of old garbage before they can even build a working executable.B) old hardware isn't our platform
Why not? Linux is great for old hardware. I run a Plex Media server on a 2007 Core2Quad, it's pretty solid. OK maybe not so much 1980s old, but there's actually a community of people who still make things in the original xTalk HyperCard.
2. You have to test builds on old hardware which takes time away from moving forward or fixing bugs for the hardware people are actually using. It might be months before you get anyone to even tell you that something is wrong on some old machine, then hours of trying to find out why, only to come to the conclusion "Oh yeah, that won't work on that machine at all." I've been through this before, the person I worked with made sure our stuff worked on old machines and that costs us features, time, and quality to show off on new machines. And the last time it BROKE things so bad I lost a year of work and just put the project on the shelf for good.
3. Where's our support from Linux users? I reached out to 740,000 of them and got 1 reply.
Of three flavors of Linux IDE on archive.org only 222 total views over 3 months.
That number equates to 0.03% of the entire reddit linux community.
If we compare to 2.2 million linux users its 0.001%
They've had 8 years to get a free license....where are they?
4. Where's our support or input from "old hardware" people?
There would be no need for religious debates if people simply accepted reality.55% of internet access is from mobile devices, and 42% is from desktop, that's probably my own stats too, but I don't try to reply to these long-ass discussions on my phone.
The average mobile user acesses 9 apps per day and 30 apps per week on thier mobile device.I have tried doing some mobile DAW recording, but it's minimally useful at best. I do have an iPad (with iPencil) and an old Nexus 7 tablet too. I actually did some app builds for Android using my Rhythm Grid custom Data Grid (which I WAS working on a Widget based replacement for that, which I intend to get back to at some point), that was pretty OK for making beats while standing in line somewhere. I wouldn't do image editing on a phone (tablet sure). I couldn't see myself coding on a phone.
In 2021, the number of mobile devices operating worldwide stood at almost 15 billion, up from just over 14 billion in the previous year. The number of mobile devices is expected to reach 18.22 billion by 2025, an increase of 4.2 billion devices compared to 2020 levels.
That is the new paradigm. Single purpose apps on mobile devices in a webpage by the vendor of the users choice at the cost/no cost that works for the user for the moment that they need it. Not $500 for a software suite sitting on your home computer during your two hour commute to and from work and the eight hours a day you spend away from the computer and three hours you're on Netflix.I mostly do mobile apps that are basically just mobile formatted websites running inside an app webview (Facebook for example). That's likely all included as part of that stat, so not sure if that's good for gauging anything.
Technology Reduces Employment in the Printing IndustryI can tell you there's a helluva lot of desktops, rooms full, being used around the clock at my "day job".
Visit that link, see the chart.Employment in printing and related support activities has been on the decline since the late 1990s.
Anectdotal History Lesson:
Back in 1988 I worked for a major producer of magazines, People, Heavy Metal, New Yorker, all the stupid soap opera junk at the grocery check out counter, those garbage sales circulars that fill your mailbox. We had a 30 foot wide satellite dish for beaming data to Texas for cheap printing. They had 2 Macs I wanted desperately to get my hands on. They had only one guy working in that Mac department so one $10,000 set up sat idle 99% of every single day.
I left the company telling the people I worked closely with "You'll all be out of work soon."
Six months later I ran into a guy I worked with and asked how things were going, he said they bought a bunch of computers and layed off 60 people. Strippers, compositors, layout, photo retouchers. The company I was working for when I ran into him has been reduced from 100+ employess to 4, their massive factory location is for rent while they occupy the same room barely bigger than my kitchen that they set up their computers in back in 1990.
The company I worked with before those two was leveled and turned into condominiums because computers replaced everything we did there. I worked for six different graphics companies during the 1990s. One of them remains. The last printing company I worked for was bouncing paychecks across 17 states for months, I had to call the state attorney general on them.
That's just one industry I knew was changing when other people said "No it's not".
A decade ago I was arguing that Mac game developers should accept Unity and game engines like it as the new paradigm, they said "no way! C++ or nothin'!"
Now Unity stock sells for $158 a share, they control 80% of the independent game development market, and they just bought another company for $1.8 Billion. The guy at Unity who remembered my long rants told me "We should never have started out supporting Mac developers, they didn't accept us, when we released for Windows those developers embraced us and we made our first million dollars" They are valued at $2.8 billion now.
Meanwhile that Mac game developer community has been reduced to a Discord server where nothing they say will ever reach the world wide web, you can't Google it. The guy who founded that site has retreated to a Facebook community that is stuck in an loop circle jerking around a $100 4mhz Mattel computer that sold less than 8,000 units. They could be bringing there nostalgia to modern platforms, but nope, they are stuck in a compulsion to fixate on junk hardware they overpaid for on eBay.
That guy used to say "Don't be so aggressive."
The same nearsighteness those printing people had, and those Mac game developers had is the same nearsightednss Livecode had and the same nearsighteness I see here.
14 years ago I had an iChat conversation with Kevin Miller, I made suggestions that you see every single time you open the IDE. Then I walked away because I could see clear as crystal that Livecode wasn't going to catch on become widely adopted for anything. That mattered to me at the time.
Now it matters to me that OpenXTalk, hangs on, at least as well as BASIC has hung on for fifty years.
We lack that Christmas morning new computer smell wow factor that drives people back to BASIC.
We need to adopt the new paradigm and own it, as well as we can, so people say "Wow, I can do that?"
LC is going to beat us to the punch by a year or two anyway.
I just have to sit back and wait and say "I told you so."