Revolution is now LiveCode

Earlier today, RunRev announced the availability of LiveCode 4.5 - the new name and version for the development platform Revolution.

If you've come here and don't know what LiveCode/Revolution is: it is a cross-platform development tool for Windows, MacOSX and Linux, sporting a very-high-level-language that allows you to create working solutions in far less time than other tools and languages. The LiveCode Web browser plug-in works very similar to Flash and Silverlight. There are also pre-releases available of LiveCode Server (comparable to a PHP engine) and LiveCode for iOS (yep, IPhone, iPad and iPod Touch).

Whenever I get a chance, I'll use LiveCode to put together a quick tool for my own use, or a prototype/mockup for something that will eventually be developed in another language like Progress OpenEdge ABL or Java. I also offer Quartam Reports for LiveCode, the essential report generator, and Quartam PDF Library, for those occasions when you need to go beyond 'print to pdf file'.

Where Java is built around a relatively small platform-specific Virtual Machine implementation, with a huge bytecode library on top, LiveCode has a far more optimized yet surprisingly lean core implementation for each supported operating system, and a rich language that means you'll type fewer lines of code to accomplish the same result.

I like the name change and the clearer product line-up. And I like how this new version is faster than ever before. Cheers to the RunRev team for wrapping it up after the setback concerning the iPhone/iPad implementation. Combined with Apple's recent liberation of developer tools, the future looks decidedly LiveCode!