New Year, new start. Here we are again, its 2014, and what lies ahead for LiveCode and the LiveCode community this year?

 

A Look Back

Last year certainly was an exciting one. We ran a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign, and raised enough money to rework the engine and take LiveCode Open Source. We were able to hire 3 additional programmers, and have seen the speed of development vastly improve. We delivered LiveCode Community with version 6.0 in March, the first Open Source edition, and the first of our stretch goals, Resolution Independence, with LiveCode 6.5.

 

In addition to new developers, we welcomed Steven Crighton, our Digital Marketing Manager, onto the team, and he has thrown himself with enthusiasm into the task of ensuring that more people than ever before have heard about LiveCode.

 

We've expanded both in numbers and offices. We now have a Glasgow Office as well as a brand new China Office with our partners in Beijing. LiveCode is being used in more schools, homes and workplaces than ever before.

 

In Progress

We currently have no fewer than three strands of the engine being worked on. It's a race for delivery between the Theming team and the Unicode team, to see which will provide the next major LiveCode release. In the meantime team 3 continue with the Clean Syntax project, which has made huge strides forward but still has some way to go.

 

Work has also started on porting LiveCode to use Cocoa rather than Carbon for the Mac platforms. A side project that has gained a lot of interest recently is of course also the LiveCode Raspberry Pi project, which Fraser Gordon has been working on in his spare time.

 

The Importance of Bicycle Helmets

Recently, the Clean Syntax project took a bit of a knock. One of the team working on it, our good friend Sebastian, had an unfortunate argument with a kerb while riding his bicycle to work. He was not wearing a helmet and received a blow to the head which kept him off work for several weeks! Happily he is now back at work, and has been presented with a fine new helmet, to ensure the smooth running of our LiveCode development...

 

Coming Up in 2014

What does lie ahead? We've a full roadmap to complete for you, with such exciting projects as the Physics Engine and support for Windows Mobile lined up for later in the year.

 

In Education

We're seeing more and more schools and colleges using LiveCode. We recently took part in the "Hour of Code" project, and coming up on January 30th we will be holding a Coder Dojo session here in the Edinburgh offices. There is steady demand for the services of our training team, Elanor and Neil, to teach the use of LiveCode to groups of teachers up and down the country.

 

All in all, its going to be a good year. No, its going to be a GREAT year. We can't wait.

 

Happy New Year everyone!