Let’s all give a big welcome to RunRev’s newest addition, Angus, my new pet Haggis. We already have 3 pets in RunRev HQ – Jo’s ‘best friend’ Tio Pepe, Neil’s puppy Pancake and Dave’s dog Meg, so we thought we knew what to expect from having animals in the office, but boy did we get a shock with Angus!!
A haggis, for those of you who don’t know, is a small creature from the Scottish Highlands. Some may think that Angus is an odd looking animal: he was made to withstand the wilds of mountain life so his left legs are shorter than his right (to make it easier to stay balanced on the steep slopes) and his hair is longer on one side than the other (to keep out the chill from the bracing highland gales). I rescued the haggis on a recent hiking trip to Ben Nevis, took him home and named him Angus – a good solid Scottish name meaning unnaturally strong and singular of character.
It was only when I got him to the office that I realized quite how singular Angus really was. I was worried about him causing trouble in the office. With one set of legs longer than the other he can’t walk in a straight line – he runs for his bowl, swings in a wide arc and bangs into the wall – so it’s better for everyone that I keep him by my desk. Last week we were coding a simple user interface to teach basic geometry to kindergarten students. I turned my back for no more than a minute and when I looked back, Angus was using my mouse to manipulate the interface. I think he wanted to make an app to calculate trajectories of his new, flat environment. They do say that necessity is the mother of invention.
“LiveCode is so quick to learn that even non-programmers can use it” commented Kevin Miller, RunRev CEO. “This is just another example of how, with a little bit of ingenuity, anyone can use our natural programming language to develop rich, problem solving apps with real world potential.”
It turns out haggis are surprisingly good coders. He’s struggling a bit with Apple’s submission process, but I have faith he’ll get through it – Haggis have a keen intelligence. We made a lesson to help him along.
Keep your eyes peeled the world’s first Haggis-made app to hit the iOS App Store and Android market place soon!
