Cats, Clients and Big Bird
The life of a LiveCode Consultant. Many people just want someone to write their app for them. What's it like to be the guy that does that?

by LiveCode Consultants

I often get queries from people asking if we can write their app for them, or know of anyone who can. I direct them to our consultants list for help, and I thought it might be interesting for you to get to know some of these consultants better. I asked a few what it was like to be a LiveCode consultant. Here are some of their answers.

CurryK - Curry Kenworthy

Consulting for LiveCode projects is always full of interest and surprises. People have so many creative, forward-thinking ideas for apps and tools! I respect and admire my clients for their insights, and also for their persistance; that's a key trait of the people who achieve the most with their software. Meanwhile, LiveCode is literally stuffed full of so many ways of solving problems, how can you not love it?

I enjoy all projects, but my favorite jobs are the ones that involve solving difficult or intricate problems, such as decoding various file formats, using recursion (and then pseudo-recursion) for analyzing floor plans, debugging and optimizing tricky areas of code in existing projects, or creating maps from scratch. I also have a particular fondness for games and information managers. I worked on collision, resolution handling, and timing for Catch the Train, and again I admired the creativity of my clients; that was a fun and unusual game making good use of LiveCode's abilities.

HyperActive Software - Jacqueline Landman Gay

Jacque has been around the consulting space for many years, first as a HyperCard guru and now as a highly respected LiveCode consultant. She has a passion for parrots, and offers this salutory tale for us to learn from.

Many years ago I worked on a commercial project for a client, who resold it to his customer base. It contained dozens of report printouts, and in order to test those I created some fake data for imaginary people named after TV characters.

The app was released and went through several version upgrades without incident.

Then an unhappy end-user contacted my client, complaining that the app was intentionally making fun of him. Every report he created had a header at the top that said:

USAGE REPORT FOR: BIG BIRD 123 EAST ELM TREE PAGE X OF XX

I'd forgotten to empty the header field in the printing card, and accidentally saved the app that way. It hadn't been noticed because virtually every end user supplied their own header which replaced the default field text, but any customer who didn't supply a header would get what I left in there. Of course, we immediately sent him a corrected version and released an update.

Moral of the story: don't rely on your memory. Write a handler that clears out everything that shouldn't be there and run it before shipping. I've gone farther than that -- I also include a preOpenCard handler on every data entry card, which deletes field content dynamically, so that if I forget to run the "shipIt" handler the data still won't be there.

And lastly, regardless of how positive you are that you have removed all traces of yourself, never create test data containing potentially embarrassing content.

Derbrill - Malte Pfaff-Brill

Malte has long run a consulting business in Germany, and has learned many lessons along the way. He has built up a successful business based around LiveCode.
When I started my business in 2002 things were strange. I guess they always are, when you are in your late 20's. Too old to treat life as just the party it used to be, too young to know jack about running a business. However, I sat there, just finished my design high school, with a plan to start building kiosk systems for exhibitions. Well, that was the plan. I was that little know it all, that thought he knew all the technical details to record digital audio and video sitting in his brand new office space waiting for customers to knock at the door and hire me to work for them. Except they did not.

Back then I wondered why I didn't get many gigs. Now, at the age of 40 I know that building up a network is crucial, but requires a lot of work, time, tears and sweat. So best start early! Way back in 2002 I discovered LiveCode. I started learning as much as I could about the system, to squeeze the most out of it. It was well worth it.

Nowadays I work with a variety of customers, helping build frontends for Servers and Databases. The most brilliant move for me from RunRev was to Open Source the code base. This guarantees ongoing income from governmental projects like the system we authored for archaeologists. archaeoDox is being used as standard excavation software in the Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg communes and gaining growing interest in other places as well. LiveCode being Open Source allows us to offer the product without a license fee, but offering service contracts for maintenance and development of new features for the sytem. Even though I miss building what people running a software business would call a "product" from time to time, working as a consultant has proved a great choice to run a business.

Tactile Media - Scott Rossi

Scott is well known in the LiveCode community as the king of beautiful interfaces. If you want something that looks fabulous and works like a well oiled machine, Scott's your man.

Even though I've worked with LiveCode technology for over 15 years (MetaCard > Revolution > LiveCode), folks are often surprised to learn that a good portion of my consulting business didn't involve LiveCode at all. My background is in graphics and user interface, and most of my work involves visual design and development of assets that get handed off to engineering teams for implementation. Aside from tools and demos I built for myself, LiveCode rarely entered the picture in my day-to-day business.

Not satisfied with just designing UI, over the years I developed a passion for building UIs that actually work, and LiveCode has been my tool of choice to make that happen. On many occasions, I used LiveCode to create UI prototypes, and these were very helpful in getting clients to experience the visual and behavioral aspects of my software designs. But it's only been during the last five years or so that my consulting business has started to include finished LiveCode work. Several of these projects have been especially rewarding, not only because the projects were interesting for me, but I was able to work with other LiveCode developers in the process.

One such project was One Minute Reader, an iPad application that helps kids improve their reading skills. Chris Sheffield of Read Naturally contacted me to help out with the UI design for the app, and in addition to the visuals, I wound up building a number of custom controls and other technologies that really pushed LiveCode in several areas. Chris was the lead developer on OMR, and not only did he do a bang up job of making the application work as a whole, he was also a pleasure to work with.

Another project I was fortunate to be a part of is (coincidentally) a kids music instruction application called JellyMusic. Anthony Howe is one of the principals behind JellyMusic, and he originally approached me to learn more about LiveCode and its music/sound capabilities. After several hours of Q & A over Skype, Anthony was sold on LiveCode, and he went off to create a full blown musical instruction application, with dozens of modules that help kids learn about musical instruments and appreciate various musical styles. Along the way, Anthony asked me to help out with the development of a couple of the modules, and we spent many an hour engaged in long-distance design, often bringing Skype to its knees. In the end, I think the final product he produced is quite stellar.

I'm grateful to have played a role on these projects, and have been fortunate to have had a tool like LiveCode to make it happen. I continue to look forward to what RunRev has in store for us in the future.

Application Insight - Dave Kilroy

They do say never to work with animals or children...

I'm Dave Kilroy and run my one-man software development business Application Insight from my study at home (Plymouth, Devon, UK). I used to program in .NET but escaped from the world of Microsoft and now pretty much work exclusively in LiveCode. I create apps for iOS and Android devices, for Windows and OSX desktops, and for Linux and Windows server.

I'm good at making things, some people are naturally teachers or cooks or horticulturists - I'm predisposed to make things, whether it's a table made with timber to sit down at (I started out as a cabinetmaker) or an app made with LiveCode which is useful in some fashion. My cat, on the other hand, is better at deleting things...

My opponent gives me a wide-eyed innocent stare designed to put me off my guard; but I am not fooled, not any more.

She is Dotty our charming, attention-seeking and scheming cat who likes nothing more than to stroll slowly across my keyboard with me inches away. She can spend hours looking longingly at the forbidden land of my desk, she knows I am less likely to throw her off if she jumps up while I'm on the phone - and her goal is always to prance around on my keyboard waiting for my reaction.

In the past I would usually not be too bothered and would scoop her off my desk once the call ended, delete the random characters she had managed to type - "what could go wrong" I would think and carry on with my work.

But one day I was working on a remote server, Dotty was in attendance on the floor and all was well with the world. Then the phone rang, I answered it, she jumped up and did some fancy footwork and was able to delete quite a lot of files from the server before I realised what was going on...

Well never again. My cat is ready to play again ... but I am vigilant and will never be defeated!

And I'd just like to say, I never particularly liked cats in the past and my wife and kids are the only ones that spoil our pets.

SMASH Digital - Steve Thomas

Just starting on the consultancy path is Steve Thomas, previously graphic designer with RunRev.

My name is Steve and I have worked for RunRev as a digital design for some time. I am now leaving however to set up my own digital design studio offering design and marketing services for LiveCoders.

My studio is called SMASH Digital and is open to all LiveCoders. Based in Edinburgh I will be sharing my passion for all things digital, offering design for apps, games, eBooks as well as icons, brands and promotional websites. As an expert in UI and UX design I have spoken at many events for RunRev including slots at RunRevLive.

While at RunRev I worked on the Academy Series and took this experience further by creating the Cut it Out Diet App with Senior Developer Elanor Buchanan.
I have also had the privilege of working with several prominent members of the LiveCode community and you can see my portfolio here.

Services SMASH offer include:

• App Design
• User Interface and User Experience Design
  
• Artwork and Illustration for Games and eBooks
  
• App Icons
  
• Branding and Websites
  
• Advice and Consultation

I'm really excited to be embarking on this journey and look forward to designing beautiful things for you!

And there you have it. I'm sure Steve can benefit from the advice given in this article. Don't employ cats to assist you, never use embarassing test data, network like crazy, and love your clients. You'll do fine!