1. EUPHORIA discussion
Hello, all...
My name is Chris Price, and I'm a computer science student in stasis
(meaning, I'm not in school now, but will be soon). I stumbled upon
Euphoria in an effort to figure out what would be necessary to learn to
program. I have since begun to fall in love with our little language. My
previous experience in programming being BASIC on my Commodore 16 (no, not
64; 16), and a little Pascal work, and a short stint with C, I was excited
to find a language that seemed to be designed with the programmer in mind,
without sacrificing power. And being so young, it can only get better. I
want to do everything in my power to promote the language. So let me make
a few comments on some things I've seen discussed while I was lurking.
One of the first messages I read after joining the list pertained to
calling the next official version of Euphoria "Euphoria 98." After I
fought to keep my lunch, I contemplated the reasons why I would hate such a
name. First off, what is the point? What's so bad about version numbers?
Within the programming community, we *still* end up dealing with version
numbers, and I think such a label would simply be catering to the lowest
common denominator (which I do NOT endorse). In particular, I think that
date-based labelling is a handicap. For example, I have Borland's C++
4.52. with that name I can tell that there's been over 4 released
revisions of the software. I know that it has marked improvement over 4.0,
but isn't quite improved enough to be a full version higher; it is an
upgrade of 4.0, in essense. What if it were called, for example, "C++
'95?" That would tell me that it probably came out between late '94 and
early '96. Whee. That's a load of info. If you want to know more, you
have to look at the--that's right--version number. So why add the extra
step? It'd look silly, anyway, if Euphoria, as I hope it does, is
eventually ported to more platforms, like Unix, Mac, Sun, etc. This has
probably been dropped long ago, but I thought I'd toss in my little
comment. :)
Speaking of which, I think that porting Euphoria to other platforms would
*greatly* improve it's marketability, respect, and power. As another
poster said, Unix users are basically forced to use C. C is the #1
programming language now because it is fast, but also because it so
portable. Virtually every platform supports C. You can even get a console
gaming kit and write Saturn or Playstation games if you know C. Euphoria
could definitely benefit from ports. If Euphoria were to become a Linux
mainstay, for example, a lot of people would be exposed to it's power, and
moreover, be capable of putting it to use. This would, in turn, create a
great increase in Euphoria support, and accellerate the development of the
language (and get Mr. Craig a little more jingle in his pocket). I, for
one, would love to see this.
Finally, a little announcement. This is not intended to detract from this
list, but yesterday, a friend and I founded a channel on DALnet IRC called
#EuProgramming. I created this channel to encourage discussion of the
language. (it's had the fortunate byproduct of attracting some people who
are looking for programming channels, and giving them their first knowledge
of the language.) I encourage you to stop by if/when you can; it's a good
way for the Euphoria community to communicate. (Apologies in advance if
there is/are other Euphoria-related IRC channel(s) that this might steal
traffic from).
All for now,
Warpticon, who can't believe he had so much to say.
Song Currently Stuck in Head (SCSiH): Fight for Nutmeg
