Greetings. While I was submitting my iTunes review for the hardworking folks at TLL, I noticed there were only 22 other reviews. Aren’t most Codea users happy with the new features? I know I am. Furthermore, don’t happy users leave positive reviews? If so then I must conclude that the maximum size of the Codea community is around 22 people–because there are only 22 reviews. I feel special.
I left a review last night, actually!
Did mine sometime ago. It certainly needs a lot more though!
Thanks everyone. Reviews really help us a lot!
I agree. When you’re being asked to spend $10, the first thing you look at is the reviews, and there aren’t many.
Just added my 5 stars again. That the problem with updates: you must renew your comment!..
Same 
Oups updated mine also … Thanks Ric
Where are the 22 reviews? I see none for the current version and three for all versions…
Where are the 22 reviews? I see none for the current version and three for all versions…
@inancyuce… I currently see 39 ratings for this version. Also, I believe TLL just sent version 1.5.2 to Apple for approval. If so, then we should see the update in about a week. From what I understand, Apple permits us to submit a rating before the update AND after the update–and both will count towards TLL’s overall total.
The way I see it, I purchased Codea (for ten bucks) over a year ago and haven’t given TLL a dime since. Yet in that time, I’ve benefitted from several awesome updates. And I’ve learned a lot about Lua programming.
So, since I don’t pay for the new features, who does? New customers of course. And numerous, 5-star ratings attract new customers, which encourages TLL to add new toys to Codea for me to play with.
Heck I’d gladly pay for updates and/or addons. With as much time and enjoyment that I’ve gotten out of codea, its a steal. TLL has really kept me happy with the updates. I just hope they keep comming and that there is enough of a continued financial incentive to keep it up.
Yup, I would gladly pay for updates with a modest pricing structure to keep the ball rolling at TLL to fund innovation and updates. Even enabling new ‘advanced’ functionality (e.g shaders, Xcode export etc…) as an in-app purchase would not have been unwarranted nor unwelcome.
But in the interim, more than happy to write glowing reviews and testimonials to support the exposure of Codea to the masses!
Ps. @Simeon, out of curiosity - can you give us a clue as a very very rough number, how many Codea users there are out there? Hundreds? Thousands? Difficult to tell from looking simply at the forum registrations.
@andymac3d Codea has about 50,000 users. Most new users come in “spikes” during promotions (i.e., we gained a large amount of users when Codea was on sale for $1). Codea earns enough to pay one developer full time — unfortunately we are three developers, so @John and I work part time — one day a week on Codea and our soon-to-be-released game Crabitron.
If you would make an second app called ‘XcodeCompiler’, where we send our Xcode compilation, and the necessary data, then have this app upload the xcode to your server, process it automatically, then i can install the code with testflight on my ipad, i would pay up to 4$ per compilation (preferably 1$). Would that make a business model? I’ve seen a company on the web that does this for 50$ to 100$ entrance then 10$ per compilation. The number of Codea users that have a PC and dont want to go to mac is certainly higher than 50%. i would surely pay ~40$/year and /app for that simplicity.
Lets say 1000 people pays 50$ per year average => 40 k$ per year => pays for and additionnal full time? And if it really works well, the revenues can be higher. And it is recurring revenues, that is an important difference! On the other hand, if i look on the number of downloads on my site, we are onLy ~ 25 active users… That doesnt even pay for the mac…
I second Jmv38’s proposal!!! If you could get me from Codea code to iPad app in the fewest steps possible–I’d pay for the service. However, I don’t think you need a second app. You probably just need an option in Codea to ‘Export to AppCompiler,’ in addition to ‘Export to XCode.’ Then after I selected the option (and paid the fee), Codea would send me an email link that would allow me to install my app using Testflight. In my humble opinion, that’s a ‘win-win’ suggestion.
I guess whilst having some sort of external Xcode compilation process is desirable - as @Simeon mentioned, there’s only 3 developers working pretty much part time so I guess this would have an impact on developing Codeas core functionality further.
Ps. 50k users? Impressive stuff - I really didn’t think it would be anywhere near that !
I would pay a reasonable subscription fee to help Codea, because the current income will peak at some point - unless you find a way to attract youngsters as they become interested in programming.
The amount of enjoyment I get from Codea I’d support more ongoing. Even at a very simplistic level a donate/help fund TLL button on your website would be fine, I’d click it every so often.
Hear hear