1. A controversial topic

Hi

Imagine a superhero braced with his shield braced against the onslaught of unimaginable forces rained against him (or her).....

We should change the name of Euphoria to include basic in it's name - as a first stab OeBasic.

The reasons are many, but primary ones being lack of new users, and no one exactly what euphoria is. It's never going to have the traction of python, and in my mind is a step between traditional basic and C.

Discuss (and berate it you want, I can take it!)

Cheers

Chris

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2. Re: A controversial topic

D'ya think that will stand out?

AmigaBASIC, Applesoft BASIC, Aquarius BASIC, Atari BASIC, B4J, B4X, BASIC, Basic09, BASIC256, Batari Basic, BBC BASIC, BootBASIC, Casio BASIC, Chipmunk Basic, Commodore BASIC, Craft Basic, Creative Basic, EhBASIC, FreeBASIC, FutureBasic, FUZE BASIC, GB BASIC, GFA Basic, GLBasic, GW-BASIC, Integer BASIC, IS-BASIC, IWBASIC, Liberty BASIC, LibreOffice Basic, Locomotive Basic, MelonBasic, Microsoft Small Basic, Minimal BASIC, MSX Basic, Nascom BASIC, NS-HUBASIC, OeBasic, OxygenBasic, Palo Alto Tiny BASIC, PowerBASIC, PureBasic, QB64, QBasic, QL SuperBASIC, QuickBASIC, Quite BASIC, REALbasic, Run BASIC, S-BASIC, Script Basic, ScriptBasic, Sinclair ZX81 BASIC, Smart BASIC, SmileBASIC, Superbase BASIC, TechBASIC, TI-83 BASIC, TI-89 BASIC, Tiny BASIC, Tiny Craft Basic, True BASIC, Turbo-Basic XL, VB6, VBA, VBScript, Visual Basic, Visual Basic .NET, Wee Basic, XBasic, Yabasic, ZX Spectrum Basic

Better Than Basic
I Can't Believe It's Not Basic
The Quite Delightful And Actually Enjoyable Programming Language
The Tell Me What Just Went Wrong In A Human Readable Way Programming Language
Quite Simply The Best Ever Programming Language, That Is Apart From Phix, Obviously

If I jot down a list of recent-ish programming languages that (imo) gained fairly impressive traction:

Go, Kotlin, Lua, Phix, Python, Racket, Ruby, Rust, Scheme.

It becomses rather hard to claim it is the name that matters, or makes any difference whatsoever.
(PS I was being rather sarcastic with one of the entries in that list, can you spot which one?)

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3. Re: A controversial topic

Hahaha.

Duly berated!

Yes, I think so. And you're biased. And also thanks for giving me a list of basics to try!

RapidQ too.

Waiting for other PsOV.

Cheers

Chris

PS - so what's the 'grab me and me look at this feature' that Eu has, and will make people take notice of it?

C

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4. Re: A controversial topic

I've been working on raising Euphoria's profile. And thank you to those among the community here who have helped.

Including "BASIC" in the name wouldn't help at all. BASIC is poohpoohed by significant slabs of the programming world (despite the fact that many people gained a foothold in the industry through it, myself included). BASIC is in the same irrationally-motivated "must hate" list that COBOL is in.

You'd be better off calling it Mongoose for all the good a name change would do. The fact is, the language has had a name for years that has served it well enough. Before fixing the name, how about fixing the product: file off some of the sharp edges and deal with some of the more egregious issues in the outstanding tickets.

-Bruce

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5. Re: A controversial topic

ChrisB said...

so what's the 'grab me and me look at this feature' ... ?

Before we answer that about Euphoria, answer it for Python, Clojure, Go, Kotlin, Rust, C++ etc. None of these languages are "single issue" languages. I'm part way through the Exercism learning tracks for Python, Clojure, Go, Kotlin and Rust (and 21 others (language junkie much)). There's no "one feature" that grabs me about any of them. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Each requires a particular way of thinking about how to solve problems with programming languages. This "grab me and look at" sounds like marketing-speak. Before Perl was marketable, it worked. Before Python was marketable, it worked. Euphoria mostly works but needs more done before it works enough to be marketable.

-Bruce

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6. Re: A controversial topic

Wasn't there a attempt or a dicussion about changing Euphoria's name in the past? I remember something along the lines of some who wanted to call it mongoose. I'm fine with it being Euphoria. As many other programmers, I started with BASIC, but of course moved on to better languages.

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7. Re: A controversial topic

Hi

Ok, so I can see there is no traction for this idea, so I'll let it go.

Bruce, I agree with everything you say, and the OP was to stimulate discussion as much as anything else, and I think you hit the nail on the head, twice.

There is no single feature in any of those languages that says pick me, they are all general purpose, they all have their pros and cons, and they are all free to download.

I concede that 'grab me and look at me' is very marketing, but if you don't market something then you don't sell it.

The reason I posted this is that I am a member of a BASIC (biased to towards old school 8 bit machines) facebook page with various discussions (I like BASIC) and Eu came up, and what struck me is that there was very little understanding of Eu, it was almost like it was nothing more than a BASIC like 'toy' language with one based array indexing, and not a general purpose language that can happily compete with the likes of Python et al.

How do we get this across to people / newcomers? Perhaps marketing is indeed the way forward.

Fixing (Phixing?) the language as people are saying is one step, but honestly there isn't a great deal that needs fixing, and the one man who has the reins is working flat out within the confines of actual real life, and until we get more capable people (and I am not one of them) to help him then progress will be very slow.

One thing that does stand out looking at those other languages is that Eu's website looks 'dated'. It's impossible to say this without sounding like I'm criticizing it - I'm not, but compared to the others it does (IMHO). What would it take to re-write it?

Anyway, just my musing thoughts.

Cheers

Chris

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8. Re: A controversial topic

ChrisB said...

The reason I posted this is that I am a member of a BASIC (biased to towards old school 8 bit machines) facebook page ...

Ah, so you would not have seen me trying to encourage the folk at FreeBASIC.net to consider starting an Exercism track for BASIC. Maybe someone ... maybe someone ...

-Bruce

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9. Re: A controversial topic

Hi

No, I hadn't.

Chris

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10. Re: A controversial topic

ChrisB said...

How do we get this across to people / newcomers? Perhaps marketing is indeed the way forward.

We need to flank it from all sides: start doing regular releases, update the website, bring in modern features and libraries, and market the hell out of it. All of that needs to be done at the same time, but it's a delicate balance to avoid drawing in too many people who are then turned off by something dated (like the website) and turn away to never return. It's a delicate balance. Personally, I'm trying to "lie low" on marketing anything until we've got releases working and a decent facelift on the website. Then we hit hard with marketing on all fronts.

-Greg

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11. Re: A controversial topic

axtens_bruce said...

You'd be better off calling it Mongoose

Shh. I was hoping to use Mongoose as the name for something else...

-Greg

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12. Re: A controversial topic

axtens_bruce said...
ChrisB said...

so what's the 'grab me and me look at this feature' ... ?

Before we answer that about Euphoria, answer it for Python, Clojure, Go, Kotlin, Rust, C++ etc. None of these languages are "single issue" languages. I'm part way through the Exercism learning tracks for Python, Clojure, Go, Kotlin and Rust (and 21 others (language junkie much)). There's no "one feature" that grabs me about any of them.

This is the wrong way to think of a language, unless you are making an extreme leap away from the norm. Considering how OE has traditionally fought against being outstanding (in many ways), arguing for uniqueness is a dead end. I recall introducing "string tokens", the fight against pretty much every word ("string") and meaning ("word" is like an atom) and origin (mIRC) and concept (Ai processing, small databases), and then it being picked up as a library in other languages, and then OE being formed out of RDS Euphoria and changing what i had done before incorporating it into OE.

OE's best features is the built-in sequence type, as linked data store, and user typecasting, to lock in a fixed format in a program. I would not use OE without these two, but sadly everything outstanding that could be built on them is disallowed because it wasn't already allowed or no one needs it right this minute.

axtens_bruce said...

They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Each requires a particular way of thinking about how to solve problems with programming languages. This "grab me and look at" sounds like marketing-speak. Before Perl was marketable, it worked. Before Python was marketable, it worked. Euphoria mostly works but needs more done before it works enough to be marketable.

Sadly, when OE was formed, a lot of work was put into "eye candy", such as maps, or making case() better than any one else's case(). I looked down the list of "improvements" and was repeatedly saying "we don't need that", "too narrow of focus", etc etc.. I am not saying stuff didn't work (<coff>case, compiled tasks</coff>), but to the extent it worked it could have been an include file. Instead of fixing 100% of the bugs, we got immensely complex preprocessors to twist source code so it fit .. something.

Icy_Viking said...

Wasn't there a attempt or a dicussion about changing Euphoria's name in the past?

I remember that too. When searching for it online, "programming" was not in the results.

ghaberek said...

We need to flank it from all sides: start doing regular releases, update the website, bring in modern features and libraries, and market the hell out of it. All of that needs to be done at the same time, but it's a delicate balance to avoid drawing in too many people who are then turned off by something dated (like the website) and turn away to never return. It's a delicate balance. Personally, I'm trying to "lie low" on marketing anything until we've got releases working and a decent facelift on the website. Then we hit hard with marketing on all fronts.

I agree, no marketting until it's [Ph,f]ixed. Brownie points if you know where that Euphoria syntax is from. Also "killer app" has been mentioned before. But everything people have asked for to make one is in opposition to the fundamental base of Euphoria. To me, the original beauty of RDS's Eu was it was interpreted, NOT compiled, so it could have been less restrictive about what it could do, and how fast it could evolve, as in keeping ahead of the crowd.

Kat

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13. Re: A controversial topic

Just when you think you found something.. Xojo can recognize and read-ONLY (no writing to) serial hardware, and has easy timers, but it's arrays cannot be used like sequences. I am looking at that list of programming languages and seeing a centipede with at least one bullet in each foot. Someone placed those bullets to constrain the languages to what they wanted. As if the goal is to make the language the owners desire, instead of what an unknown unspoiled unindoctrinated new coder needs for the next currently-unknown killer app. We have a centipede that cannot climb onto the next step up.

Kat

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14. Re: A controversial topic

axtens_bruce said...

Before we answer that about Euphoria, answer it for

katsmeow said...

This is the wrong way to think of a language, unless you are making an extreme leap away from the norm.

I think this is reasonable - we're asking why those other languages made it when OE didn't - i.e., what's different from OE that moved it away from the norm?

Heck, it's worth asking - how come Nim is so popular nowdays, relative to OE? Nim had it's start here, before moving to its own community.

katsmeow said...

Considering how OE has traditionally fought against being outstanding (in many ways),

I'd like to point out from my POV, and IMVHO, it was more for RDS Eu (the pre-FOSS days) where this was true.

katsmeow said...

arguing for uniqueness is a dead end.

Agree in part - effort is probably better spend moving the language to the norm first. Again, I think the lessons of Nim will be instructive here.

katsmeow said...

I recall introducing "string tokens", the fight against pretty much every word ("string") and meaning ("word" is like an atom) and origin (mIRC) and concept (Ai processing, small databases),

I don't really recall these - except for a vague recollection of why we'd want to target mIRC, a closed source and Windoze only system (and an IRC client rather than a language meant by its authors to be general purpose) - but again this was also in the RDS Eu days.

Incidentally, back then I also recall supporting a concept of strings as atoms for Eu (which RobCraig had mentioned was a feature of the language that was RDS Eu's predecessor).

katsmeow said...

and then it being picked up as a library in other languages,

Well, it's hard to stop the spread of good ideas. Also, why would we want to?

katsmeow said...

and then OE being formed out of RDS Euphoria and changing what i had done before incorporating it into OE.

Simply because there were many good ideas and the above was necessary to incorporate all of the ideas that did make it into OE.

katsmeow said...

OE's best features is the built-in sequence type, as linked data store, and user typecasting, to lock in a fixed format in a program.

And, as you point out, not unique to OE. Java has vectors, for example, and any object oriented language can easily accomplish the fixed format lock.

katsmeow said...

I would not use OE without these two, but sadly everything outstanding that could be built on them is disallowed because it wasn't already allowed or no one needs it right this minute.

I'd disagree on both points - in general, the team was happy to accept patches, and of course pretty much everyone needed everything five minutes ago. The issue back then, and which is still the case today, is getting volunteer effort to build these things.

axtens_bruce said...

They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Each requires a particular way of thinking about how to solve problems with programming languages. This "grab me and look at" sounds like marketing-speak. Before Perl was marketable, it worked. Before Python was marketable, it worked. Euphoria mostly works but needs more done before it works enough to be marketable.

katsmeow said...

Sadly, when OE was formed, a lot of work was put into "eye candy", such as maps,

Actually, hashmaps has become a basic data type of most languages now (Java has HashMaps, Python has dicts, Ruby has hashes, and so on).

It wasn't so much about eye candy but about updating OE to the norm.

katsmeow said...

or making case() better than any one else's case().

Ah, this one I remember well. There wasn't really a serious argument over this, it was more based on my misunderstanding on how other languages like C implement the switch-case statement, which lead me to question if we should do it like C and require hard constants/literals only for optimized speed or if it should be more flexible and allow variables.

katsmeow said...

I looked down the list of "improvements" and was repeatedly saying "we don't need that",

Well, it was about modernizing and moving to the norm, so we could build the better things on top more easily....

katsmeow said...

"too narrow of focus", etc etc..

... while trying to deal with the lack of volunteer effort.

katsmeow said...

I am not saying stuff didn't work (<coff>case, compiled tasks</coff>),

Ack on case. Don't recall an issue with compiled tasks (aside from in a translated shared lib, but the one known case where it came up (using std/http from a translated shared lib) the issue was resolved).

katsmeow said...

but to the extent it worked it could have been an include file.

That actually is the case for the maps described in https://openeuphoria.org/forum/137583.wc#137583

katsmeow said...

Instead of fixing 100% of the bugs, we got immensely complex preprocessors to twist source code so it fit .. something.

Technically, not a preprocessor (it's changes to OE's own tokenizer/etc). But point taken. Again, to fit the norm while trying to use what little volunteer effort existed as efficently as possible. Sometimes this meant compromises were made with the best of intentions that with hindsight, may have gone better if done differently.

katsmeow said...

I agree, no marketting until it's [Ph,f]ixed. Brownie points if you know where that Euphoria syntax is from. Also "killer app" has been mentioned before.

Sounds like there's widespread agreement on this point.

katsmeow said...

But everything people have asked for to make one is in opposition to the fundamental base of Euphoria. To me, the original beauty of RDS's Eu was it was interpreted, NOT compiled, so it could have been less restrictive about what it could do, and how fast it could evolve, as in keeping ahead of the crowd.

Kat

So it was RDS Eu that introduced the translator, in the 2.x series line. Not OE that did this.

But point taken. The oldest versions of RDS Eu did indeed only come in an interpreted flavour. Perhaps Phix is a better choice then, lacking the baggage of RDS Eu it avoids the need for the translation and C compiler steps. In practice Phix has also evolved faster (e.g. officially supporting threads and try-catch), despite having a smaller team for most of its existence - something I attribute to the overhead of C.

katsmeow said...

Just when you think you found something.. Xojo can recognize and read-ONLY (no writing to) serial hardware, and has easy timers, but it's arrays cannot be used like sequences. I am looking at that list of programming languages and seeing a centipede with at least one bullet in each foot. Someone placed those bullets to constrain the languages to what they wanted. As if the goal is to make the language the owners desire, instead of what an unknown unspoiled unindoctrinated new coder needs for the next currently-unknown killer app. We have a centipede that cannot climb onto the next step up.

Kat

Another issue is that to extend or change OE you have to know C - otherwise you can't update the baseline interpreter or the translator. With the self-hosted Phix, it's far easier to code your desired features or updates in Eu and then apply them to the Phix source code. Easier to overcome the barriers.

(Unlike RDS Eu, the cases of OE and Phix are less about the "owners" disallowing changes but more about folks requesting features that no one has time and interest and ability to implement. Even so, with Phix the barriers are still easier to overcome for the reasons stated above. It's the nice thing about FOSS - if you disagree, you can fork the project's source code and do it yourself.)

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15. Re: A controversial topic

jimcbrown said...
axtens_bruce said...

Before we answer that about Euphoria, answer it for

katsmeow said...

This is the wrong way to think of a language, unless you are making an extreme leap away from the norm.

I think this is reasonable - we're asking why those other languages made it when OE didn't - i.e., what's different from OE that moved it away from the norm?

I think it's like arguing over the physical design of a Phillips-type screw instead of why it's not a nail.

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

arguing for uniqueness is a dead end.

Agree in part - effort is probably better spend moving the language to the norm first. Again, I think the lessons of Nim will be instructive here.

And here i am, still arguing for NOT-norm, to make a larger step.

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

I recall introducing "string tokens", the fight against pretty much every word ("string") and meaning ("word" is like an atom) and origin (mIRC) and concept (Ai processing, small databases),

I don't really recall these - except for a vague recollection of why we'd want to target mIRC, a closed source and Windoze only system (and an IRC client rather than a language meant by its authors to be general purpose) - but again this was also in the RDS Eu days.

I wasn't targetting mIRC, i was trying to bring together some concepts with Eu's less-restrictive sequences and faster speed. I still believe in mIRC's .timers, access to the var list, test for and reading of functions, and reloading of pseudo-include files during runtime.

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

and then it being picked up as a library in other languages,

Well, it's hard to stop the spread of good ideas. Also, why would we want to?

I don't know why you want to. What have you got against reloading include files whenever desired? Only way around the roadblocks i know of is truely globally shared variables between programs which can be shut down and restarted with new include files. And that is a can of worms due to locking and time constraints.

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

I would not use OE without these two, but sadly everything outstanding that could be built on them is disallowed because it wasn't already allowed or no one needs it right this minute.

I'd disagree on both points - in general, the team was happy to accept patches, and of course pretty much everyone needed everything five minutes ago. The issue back then, and which is still the case today, is getting volunteer effort to build these things.

Yet developers ran off and formed their own languages.

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

Sadly, when OE was formed, a lot of work was put into "eye candy", such as maps,

Actually, hashmaps has become a basic data type of most languages now (Java has HashMaps, Python has dicts, Ruby has hashes, and so on).

It wasn't so much about eye candy but about updating OE to the norm.

Then why, to this day, are people mentioning that maps doesn't solve their problems? This problem didn't exist until maps was added!

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

or making case() better than any one else's case().

Ah, this one I remember well. There wasn't really a serious argument over this, it was more based on my misunderstanding on how other languages like C implement the switch-case statement, which lead me to question if we should do it like C and require hard constants/literals only for optimized speed or if it should be more flexible and allow variables.

Small thinking again. Why not allow variables, expressions, and etc? Let the compiler optimize for speed on a case-by-case situation.

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

I looked down the list of "improvements" and was repeatedly saying "we don't need that",

Well, it was about modernizing and moving to the norm, so we could build the better things on top more easily....

I don't think so. A "call for code" was made for irc.e, and you still do not have one. I wrote strtok.e, and it was re-written and functions dropped. But you have maps.e. I extended tasks, and so what? <shrug> I most recently tossed out "fake classes" and "shared vars" and "named_vars".

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

"too narrow of focus", etc etc..

... while trying to deal with the lack of volunteer effort.

Some people left to form new languages, some quietly worked on run-arounds. Few concepts were welcome, and the contribution process got overy complex (<coff>spelling errors in source code</coff>), and knowing C was required.

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

I am not saying stuff didn't work (<coff>case, compiled tasks</coff>),

Ack on case. Don't recall an issue with compiled tasks (aside from in a translated shared lib, but the one known case where it came up (using std/http from a translated shared lib) the issue was resolved).

IIRC it wasn't solved, it was disallowed, which broke the point of handling the blocking of the entire program by http.e if the server hung. BTW, another good reason to be able to unload malfunctioning include files.

jimcbrown said...

(Unlike RDS Eu, the cases of OE and Phix are less about the "owners" disallowing changes but more about folks requesting features that no one has time and interest and ability to implement. Even so, with Phix the barriers are still easier to overcome for the reasons stated above. It's the nice thing about FOSS - if you disagree, you can fork the project's source code and do it yourself.)

Yes, not welcome here because i disagree, i am not going to use that, go start your own language. We have no contributors or developers!<sigh>

Kat

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16. Re: A controversial topic

jimcbrown said...

Agree in part - effort is probably better spend moving the language to the norm first. Again, I think the lessons of Nim will be instructive here.

katsmeow said...

And here i am, still arguing for NOT-norm, to make a larger step.

I think "larger" is the keyword here. There's nothing inherently wrong with aiming higher, but I'd rather not waste time designing something that no one is ever going to build.

You can see this with my experimental branches (for euphoria threads and for self modifying IL/eval statement) - when a useful idea is proposed, I like to flesh it out so others can play with it. But a lot of good ideas aren't so easily whiped up.

jimcbrown said...

I think this is reasonable - we're asking why those other languages made it when OE didn't - i.e., what's different from OE that moved it away from the norm?

katsmeow said...

I think it's like arguing over the physical design of a Phillips-type screw instead of why it's not a nail.

Probably because that's what we were given to start with.

Though I've not made a secret about replacing OE with Phix outright (again echoing my point about RDS Eu bringing baggage and being hard to develop on).

katsmeow said...

I wasn't targetting mIRC, i was trying to bring together some concepts with Eu's less-restrictive sequences and faster speed.

Ah, gotcha. Even less reason to resist these concepts then!

katsmeow said...

I still believe in mIRC's .timers,

Not too familiar with these, but re: timers in general, I think it's a good idea. (On nix I emulate them by using system() to start a process in the background using the ampersand, which will sleep for the required interval and then send a signal to the Eu process afterwards.)

katsmeow said...

access to the var list,

Me too. I vaguely recall that you have access to this nowadays through the debug api, but perhaps a slicker, more developer friendly version wouldn't hurt.

katsmeow said...

test for and reading of functions,

Again, all for it - see the euphoria-eval branch I set up some years ago, which would support something like this.

katsmeow said...

and reloading of pseudo-include files during runtime.

My memory is vague but I think a long time ago, even before OE, I wrote a preprocessor called Dredge that would do something like this: basically it'd copy over an include file to a new temp name, then include it, and then call a procedure (to go back to the main code).

jimcbrown said...

Well, it's hard to stop the spread of good ideas. Also, why would we want to?

katsmeow said...

I don't know why you want to.

For the record, I don't.

katsmeow said...

What have you got against reloading include files whenever desired?

As pointed out above, I don't. Heck, combine that with namespaces and we've got a poor man's OOP.

katsmeow said...

Only way around the roadblocks i know of is truely globally shared variables between programs which can be shut down and restarted with new include files. And that is a can of worms due to locking and time constraints.

I forget how much nicer nix is sometimes - I can instead wrap fork() and the shared memory api available on nix. If I need to worry about locking files and stuff I can also wrap flock().

jimcbrown said...

I'd disagree on both points - in general, the team was happy to accept patches, and of course pretty much everyone needed everything five minutes ago. The issue back then, and which is still the case today, is getting volunteer effort to build these things.

katsmeow said...

Yet developers ran off and formed their own languages.

Not aware of any members of the developer team who did this.

Even of forum members, I only know of one case - the author of Nim. (Actually, the author of Nim would have been happy to continue talking about the development of Nim on this forum. But it also seemed clear to me that the author would have wanted to create Nim from scratch on his own regardless, it's not something we could have changed even if we invited the author to join the developer team.)

Not sure Phix counts either, as I believe petelomax started on it in the RDS Eu days - and no one can accuse him of running off from these forums.

jimcbrown said...

Actually, hashmaps has become a basic data type of most languages now (Java has HashMaps, Python has dicts, Ruby has hashes, and so on).

It wasn't so much about eye candy but about updating OE to the norm.

katsmeow said...

Then why, to this day, are people mentioning that maps doesn't solve their problems?

If you are referring to https://openeuphoria.org/forum/137604.wc

It's because the implementation was done in an incomplete way. (Another compromise that in hindsight...) We actually know the way forward on this (as Greg pointed out regarding the need to support JSON), but again ... volunteer effort.

katsmeow said...

This problem didn't exist until maps was added!

A bit like saying "Folks wouldn't be complaining about fire hoses being too short if we never got fire hydrants!" - technically true, but kind of missing the point. Fires will still burn things down in either case, what needs to be done is to finish the job by making fire hoses long enough to reach the fires from the hydrants.

LIkewise, in the above example, the OP likely would have been posting about how to store data in a map like structure if OE didn't have maps at all, and possibly even more effort to implement the answers (assuming something like EDS was out of the question for some reason).

jimcbrown said...

Ah, this one I remember well. There wasn't really a serious argument over this, it was more based on my misunderstanding on how other languages like C implement the switch-case statement, which lead me to question if we should do it like C and require hard constants/literals only for optimized speed or if it should be more flexible and allow variables.

katsmeow said...

Small thinking again. Why not allow variables, expressions, and etc? Let the compiler optimize for speed on a case-by-case situation.

Whoops, my mistake - I meant to say "more flexible and allow variables, expressions, and etc"

jimcbrown said...

Well, it was about modernizing and moving to the norm, so we could build the better things on top more easily....

katsmeow said...

I don't think so. A "call for code" was made for irc.e, and you still do not have one.

Aside from Eu itself, I have never worked with IRC in any of the languages mentioned in this thread. It's not very common nowadays.

I don't recall the "call for code" anymore, but I vaguely recall that there were multiple attempts to make one. jeremy had an Eu IRC client iirc that he was working to converting into a generic IRC library for the stdlib, and ryanj was looking to do something similar.

It was simply another situation where even the devs didn't have time to finish the projects that they started.

katsmeow said...

I wrote strtok.e, and it was re-written and functions dropped.

Perhaps, but not by the dev team. https://openeuphoria.org/forum/m/109731.wc

katsmeow said...

But you have maps.e.

As has been pointed out, maybe not entirely...

katsmeow said...

I extended tasks, and so what? <shrug> I most recently tossed out "fake classes" and "shared vars" and "named_vars".

Certainly, what you do with your own time and your own code is your own matter.

A decade ago, it wouldn't really have been of interest to the dev team until there was some actual code shared that could be integrated into the stdlib or the other parts of the language. Nowadays ... I mean, Greg's the one saying that more volunteers are required and essential.

katsmeow said...

Some people left to form new languages,

Like Nim. I think this was rare, just because it's not so easy to write your own compiler or lexer...

katsmeow said...

some quietly worked on run-arounds.

Like yourself. Less quietly, like myself (with the Dredge preprocessor) and dcuny (who did a lot of preprocessors in the RDS Eu days).

katsmeow said...

Few concepts were welcome,

Sorry for sounding like a broken record here, but again - the concepts themselves were welcome, but finding folks with time and experience to code them into the language was another matter.

katsmeow said...

and the contribution process got overy complex (<coff>spelling errors in source code</coff>),

Ironically, things like https://openeuphoria.org/forum/m/137385.wc were because of an experiment to simplify said process.

katsmeow said...

and knowing C was required.

Well, yeah, okay, you got me there. Even a guy as brilliant as Greg took years to get up to speed with OE's C internals, https://openeuphoria.org/forum/m/137253.wc

katsmeow said...

IIRC it wasn't solved, it was disallowed,

Ah right, task_yield() getting compiled out in std/net/http.e's execute_request()

katsmeow said...

which broke the point of handling the blocking of the entire program by http.e if the server hung.

That's .. not quite how it worked. The sockets library has a receive() method that respects a timeout. If the server hung, the receive() method would time out, no data would be received, and the routine would exit out and return.

Also, tasks are a form of cooperative multitasking, but the sockets library didn't play nicely with that - if receive() waited too long before timing out, there was no way for other tasks to continue in the meantime. That would have required preemptive multitasking - or threads.

Where the task_yield() was useful was to allow other tasks to run in between grabbing globs of data, if the http library was busy downloading a huge chunk of data in small bites. Other tasks get to run if we're downloading a big multigig DVD or something over the web.

I guess the reason this hasn't been a big problem is that most http stuff I've seen with Eu has been either fully interpreted, or only on nix if translated. On nix, the translated shared library can be loaded, then fork() can be called. The http call then runs inside the child process, without blocking the main code that runs in the parent process.

fork() is so useful.

katsmeow said...

BTW, another good reason to be able to unload malfunctioning include files.

Hey, you know me, I'm all for being as dynamic as possible.

jimcbrown said...

(Unlike RDS Eu, the cases of OE and Phix are less about the "owners" disallowing changes but more about folks requesting features that no one has time and interest and ability to implement. Even so, with Phix the barriers are still easier to overcome for the reasons stated above. It's the nice thing about FOSS - if you disagree, you can fork the project's source code and do it yourself.)

katsmeow said...

Yes, not welcome here because i disagree, i am not going to use that, go start your own language. We have no contributors or developers!<sigh>

Kat

The only truth to the above quote is the "we have no contributers or developers" line. Concepts are open to discussion and most have been found to be welcome, and not everyone has to use new features like maps or regex or http, or even goto - but they still made it in.

While I would disagree, I can see how the dev team of, say, twelve years ago, with its vigorous debates, might give a wrong impression here.

But I don't see by any measure how you could say that petelomax or ghaberek are unwelcoming... (Phix and OE are both essentially one-person teams now)

Also don't forget, but we actually have a lot of common ground here: agreeing that requiring C is a bad thing, supporting a lot of nice features (eval, reloadable includes, timers, nonblocking http in a translated shared lib), etc.

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17. Re: A controversial topic

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

IIRC it wasn't solved, it was disallowed,

Ah right, task_yield() getting compiled out in std/net/http.e's execute_request()

katsmeow said...

which broke the point of handling the blocking of the entire program by http.e if the server hung.

That's .. not quite how it worked. The sockets library has a receive() method that respects a timeout. If the server hung, the receive() method would time out, no data would be received, and the routine would exit out and return.

Also, tasks are a form of cooperative multitasking, but the sockets library didn't play nicely with that - if receive() waited too long before timing out, there was no way for other tasks to continue in the meantime. That would have required preemptive multitasking - or threads.

Or, not reading the recieve queue until there was data in it. I wrote a http fetcher and a daemon in mIRC, from scratch, and the server was threaded. So it hurt personally when such things were refused by OE.

jimcbrown said...

Where the task_yield() was useful was to allow other tasks to run in between grabbing globs of data, if the http library was busy downloading a huge chunk of data in small bites. Other tasks get to run if we're downloading a big multigig DVD or something over the web.

I guess the reason this hasn't been a big problem is that most http stuff I've seen with Eu has been either fully interpreted, or only on nix if translated. On nix, the translated shared library can be loaded, then fork() can be called. The http call then runs inside the child process, without blocking the main code that runs in the parent process.

I was on one of the slowest internet lines in the usa at the time, everything timed out. Lag times of 10 minutes was not uncommon on irc. Setting a 2 minute timeout on http was reasonable. Wget.exe's resume function was useful every day here in the olden daze.

One of my favorite weather sites updated radar images every 15 minutes, sometimes it took longer than 15 minutes to get a 120kbyte gif. I took to passing 20 second timeouts to wget (which i had wrapped in OE, called via system()), because it was faster to kill the whole process at my end and restart, than wait to see if i was still online with normal timeouts.

I took to running a PHP httpfetch script on my web host, to cut news sites' pages down to 20kbytes, because maybe i could get that without timing out.

Kat

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18. Re: A controversial topic

katsmeow said...

I was on one of the slowest internet lines in the usa at the time, everything timed out. Lag times of 10 minutes was not uncommon on irc. Setting a 2 minute timeout on http was reasonable.

Agreed - sounds quite reasonable to me as well, given the circumstances.

katsmeow said...

Wget.exe's resume function was useful every day here in the olden daze.

One of my favorite weather sites updated radar images every 15 minutes, sometimes it took longer than 15 minutes to get a 120kbyte gif. I took to passing 20 second timeouts to wget (which i had wrapped in OE, called via system()), because it was faster to kill the whole process at my end and restart, than wait to see if i was still online with normal timeouts.

Makes sense. Use the tools that work.

katsmeow said...

I took to running a PHP httpfetch script on my web host, to cut news sites' pages down to 20kbytes, because maybe i could get that without timing out.

Kat

Yep, see above.

katsmeow said...

I wrote a http fetcher and a daemon in mIRC, from scratch, and the server was threaded.

Considering that it was threaded, such a solution - reimplemented in Eu - would work today for Phix (which has threads). But sadly, still not so much for OE (which lacks them, unless you are okay with nix + fork as a sort of poor man's version).

jimcbrown said...

Also, tasks are a form of cooperative multitasking, but the sockets library didn't play nicely with that - if receive() waited too long before timing out, there was no way for other tasks to continue in the meantime. That would have required preemptive multitasking - or threads.

katsmeow said...

Or, not reading the recieve queue until there was data in it.

Agreed. We support nonblocking I/O with sockets iirc, so we should be able to do that - though to avoid busy waiting we'd still need a reasonable pause between checks (as I don't believe we support true async, where we'd receive a signal that data was ready). So we'd still need task_yield() (or on a translated shared lib on nix, a call to fork).

katsmeow said...

So it hurt personally when such things were refused by OE.

I think my point here is that such things generally were not refused - for example, the improved http.e with task_yield() that was done by you was accepted into OE by the OG dev team.

(Then, yes, we were forced to put in a less than satisfying workaround for the translated shared library case - because the tasks implementation was heck to work with when dealing with being inside of a translated shared library. Requiring lots of C knowledge and much volunteer time and effort. If someone had given us a patch to just fix it and make it work, it definitely would have gone in.)

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19. Re: A controversial topic

katsmeow said...

So it hurt personally when such things were refused by OE.

Sorry for taking so long to respond with this part - I had to take some time to gather my thoughts about it.

I want to take a moment to acknowledge this. It doesn't really matter how it happened, if we agree or disagree on the sequences of events, or who said what. Basically, you felt hurt, and that was a wrong. This shouldn't have happened.

I don't know yet what I, or others, could have done differently, but - I acknowledge that there was something I could have done differently, even if I haven't figured out what it was yet.

Even if it's too late now to have a reconciliation over that, I feel it's still important to learn from it. Otherwise, it's like the maxim about history.

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20. Re: A controversial topic

jimcbrown said...

Even if it's too late now to have a reconciliation over that, I feel it's still important to learn from it. Otherwise, it's like the maxim about history.

Sadly, it IS a repeated moment already. The maxim commemorates the many times those who had not learned have beaten down those who had a clue.

I remember being 10 years old, drawing a circuit diagram that could win/draw tic-tac-toe (with some caveats) while listening to HCJB or WLS (etc) on the radio i had rebuilt, no one else around for a mile, except on the highway. Shortly, i found out a "local" military base had an ENIAC. If there was a fact/fiction book in the county on computers, programming, and Ai, i had read it before i was out of high school. To make an already-too-long story short, i was ecstatic to find mIRC and Euphoria. As you know, i gave up years ago, and deleted megabytes of source code and data. The clue i have now is: i am 66 years old, i am unwelcome. I find spelling errors in Wikipedia too, and they don't - umm - care. The world doesn't want/deserve a real Ai. I wasted my life. And think a minute about who would be in charge of it: those repeating all the mistakes.

I would have sent this privately to jimcbrown @ admin , but i have no email account any more.

Kat

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21. Re: A controversial topic

Here's an example of those with the cudgel winning: auto-driving cars cannot keep up with minutiae at highways speeds. The programmers with no clue assign "open pavement" to any non-moving large expanse which wasn't previously labeled. The expanse is simply not examined at highway speeds. So, a parked fire truck or EMT van on the highway at the scene of an accident is perfectly suitable for driving 70mph on. Your mileage may vary.

Side effect: the local news repeatedly said the driver was killed after the wreck. There's a surprising number of drivers killed during the event, and people still let the badly programmed car with too-slow computers do the driving. People prefer this situation. Actually, they "perfer" it. Not worth it.

Kat

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22. Re: A controversial topic

katsmeow said...

i am 66 years old, i am unwelcome. I find spelling errors in Wikipedia too, and they don't - umm - care. The world doesn't want/deserve a real Ai.

  • I am 62 (today!) and, yeah, in some places I'm unwelcome.
  • I find spelling errors all over the place but everyone's too interested in sentimentalizing the immigrants' (and overseas call-centre's) struggle to learn English than demand correction and improvement (it's all about equality of outcome, right? A pox upon politically correct speech!)
  • The world will get the AI it deserves. It was probably an AI that suggested burning the vinyl chloride that spilled from the crashed rail tankers in East Palestine, Ohio.
  • I haven't given up hope. And I haven't given up telling people about Jesus (part of the reason why I'm unwelcome in some places, I expect. In some places cowardice is considered a virtue.)

-Bruce

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23. Re: A controversial topic

katsmeow said...

I would have sent this privately to jimcbrown @ admin , but i have no email account any more.

Kat

No worries from me about this.

jimcbrown said...

Even if it's too late now to have a reconciliation over that, I feel it's still important to learn from it. Otherwise, it's like the maxim about history.

katsmeow said...

Sadly, it IS a repeated moment already. The maxim commemorates the many times those who had not learned have beaten down those who had a clue.

Hmm, I had always thought the maxim worked the other way around - those who fail to learn that the oppressed always defeat a dictatorship are doomed to have their empires fall. Reference: https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/those-who-do-not-learn-history-doomed-to-repeat-it-really/

katsmeow said...

To make an already-too-long story short, i was ecstatic to find mIRC and Euphoria. As you know, i gave up years ago, and deleted megabytes of source code and data.

Somehow I'm not surprised that the author of mIRC wasn't interested in contributions to the client.

katsmeow said...

I find spelling errors in Wikipedia too, and they don't - umm - care.

The general impression I get is that contributors don't want to be told about these mistakes, rather they want the finder to directly fix them in the articles.

axtens_bruce said...

I find spelling errors all over the place but everyone's too interested in sentimentalizing the immigrants' (and overseas call-centre's) struggle to learn English than demand correction and improvement (it's all about equality of outcome, right? A pox upon politically correct speech!)

I think it's reasonable on the one hand to sympathize with immigrants and overseas workers of call centres, but on the other hand to also ask for better spelling and grammar etc. I think AI could play a useful role here in providing better automatic spell and grammer checking for these folks.

Though, you're right, if I had to choose between the two, I'd choose them (the humans) over the AI.

katsmeow said...

Here's an example of those with the cudgel winning:

Considering what happed with Twitter, granted on the cudgel winning.

katsmeow said...

auto-driving cars cannot keep up with minutiae at highways speeds. The programmers with no clue assign "open pavement" to any non-moving large expanse which wasn't previously labeled. The expanse is simply not examined at highway speeds. So, a parked fire truck or EMT van on the highway at the scene of an accident is perfectly suitable for driving 70mph on. Your mileage may vary.

Interested to learn more. Don't find any mention of this in the article, which seems to state that maybe it was the fault of the software (without the details that you provided) but also that the investigators aren't sure yet - apparently a case of drunk driving is also suspected.

katsmeow said...

Side effect: the local news repeatedly said the driver was killed after the wreck.

Died from injuries that happened in the wreck, while in the hospital, yes.

katsmeow said...

There's a surprising number of drivers killed during the event,

Alas, not surprising to me, unfortunately.

katsmeow said...

and people still let the badly programmed car with too-slow computers do the driving. People prefer this situation. Actually, they "perfer" it. Not worth it.

Kat

Not a fan of Tesla. Customers are beta testing a feature for them, while paying for it (in more ways than one).

katsmeow said...

I remember being 10 years old, drawing a circuit diagram that could win/draw tic-tac-toe (with some caveats) while listening to HCJB or WLS (etc) on the radio i had rebuilt, no one else around for a mile, except on the highway.

Inspired by Alexander Douglas's OXO for the EDSAC, no doubt.

katsmeow said...

Shortly, i found out a "local" military base had an ENIAC. If there was a fact/fiction book in the county on computers, programming, and Ai, i had read it before i was out of high school.

Quite impressive all around. Sidetracking a bit, but I wonder what kind of computer that base had - not the original ENIAC which was retired in 1955 at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, but probably something similar.

katsmeow said...

The clue i have now is: i am 66 years old, i am unwelcome. I wasted my life.

axtens_bruce said...

I am 62 (today!) and, yeah, in some places I'm unwelcome.

These sentiments remind me of Mozart, who likely thought he died a failure. I guess that can happen sometimes, when you're ahead of your time.

katsmeow said...

The world doesn't want/deserve a real Ai.

axtens_bruce said...

The world will get the AI it deserves. It was probably an AI that suggested burning the vinyl chloride that spilled from the crashed rail tankers in East Palestine, Ohio.

I suspect Bruce is right here. (Sidetracking again, but I don't see any indication of a deliberate burn of vinyl clhoride in the Ohio derailment - it seems like the fires were just a result of the accidental crash.)

katsmeow said...

And think a minute about who would be in charge of it: those repeating all the mistakes.

I just really hope to goodness that it's not Tesla.

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24. Re: A controversial topic

jimcbrown said...
jimcbrown said...

Even if it's too late now to have a reconciliation over that, I feel it's still important to learn from it. Otherwise, it's like the maxim about history.

katsmeow said...

Sadly, it IS a repeated moment already. The maxim commemorates the many times those who had not learned have beaten down those who had a clue.

Hmm, I had always thought the maxim worked the other way around - those who fail to learn that the oppressed always defeat a dictatorship are doomed to have their empires fall. Reference: https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/those-who-do-not-learn-history-doomed-to-repeat-it-really/

Those that didn't learn the empire fails, will form a new empire. Those that don't learn programming language with X features will not progress in new and exciting ways, will author another language just like all the rest. Tomorrow, another language will be formed, with the same X features, in an attempt to do something new different. This is "heritage", and "common sense", and anyone trying to change it is just looking for a fight and should be exterminated.

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

To make an already-too-long story short, i was ecstatic to find mIRC and Euphoria. As you know, i gave up years ago, and deleted megabytes of source code and data.

Somehow I'm not surprised that the author of mIRC wasn't interested in contributions to the client.

I did very little to change mIRC, what i was referring to here was even mentioning i use the language to do tasks Eu could not do, and OE still cannot do. The biggest downside to mIRC is it can "expire" and require another payment to use again, essentially holding your existing code hostage (this funds ongoing development of the language)(same as all Tesla crashes may be caused by drunk drivers). Please note, i am not singling out Tesla, i opened with the generic "self-driving cars".

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

I find spelling errors in Wikipedia too, and they don't - umm - care.

The general impression I get is that contributors don't want to be told about these mistakes, rather they want the finder to directly fix them in the articles.

Then they shouldn't be telling me they do not like my IP address every time i try to fix something, or when i try to register to be a known authorised fixer. It's like using the [Preview] button when replying to a post here, it works only if you've allowed ajax.google.com somewhere, because someone wanted it that way, so Google gets to know i posted a reply.

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

auto-driving cars cannot keep up with minutiae at highways speeds. The programmers with no clue assign "open pavement" to any non-moving large expanse which wasn't previously labeled. The expanse is simply not examined at highway speeds. So, a parked fire truck or EMT van on the highway at the scene of an accident is perfectly suitable for driving 70mph on. Your mileage may vary.

Interested to learn more. Don't find any mention of this in the article, which seems to state that maybe it was the fault of the software (without the details that you provided) but also that the investigators aren't sure yet - apparently a case of drunk driving is also suspected.

That's called "CYA reporting", shedding liability, deflecting accusations.

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

Side effect: the local news repeatedly said the driver was killed after the wreck.

Died from injuries that happened in the wreck, while in the hospital, yes.

Died instantly on impact, passenger had to be cut out of the car.

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

Shortly, i found out a "local" military base had an ENIAC. If there was a fact/fiction book in the county on computers, programming, and Ai, i had read it before i was out of high school.

Quite impressive all around. Sidetracking a bit, but I wonder what kind of computer that base had - not the original ENIAC which was retired in 1955 at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, but probably something similar.

It didn't do anything useful, It was a cross between make-work and practice moving room-sized multi-ton electronics. Might have been a case of "Midway has a defect in their water distiller" too. Either way i was surprised by the size of a single-bit flipflop module using two 12AX7.

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

The clue i have now is: i am 66 years old, i am unwelcome. I wasted my life.

axtens_bruce said...

I am 62 (today!) and, yeah, in some places I'm unwelcome.

These sentiments remind me of Mozart, who likely thought he died a failure. I guess that can happen sometimes, when you're ahead of your time.

Well, goodie for the work. I was laughed at for putting a motor and batteries in a VW in 1975, for thinking some cancers can be caused by viruses, that there was a future in computers, that putting common access radio-telephone towers at various overlapping locations was a grand idea and i wasted my time building a demo on the handy 27Mhz channels and fleshing out a business model for it, etc etc. There was the fiascos of saying in 1972 that gasoline prices were going over a dollar per gallon, or that improved solar panels could be a great idea. Today, i live in poverty, unable to replace my 34 year old car, and fearful of deploying the 40 solar panels i keep in boxes inside. Did you know solar panels are extremely loud, and using them is amorally stealing electricity from the powerco (i am repeatedly told this shirt)? It's like having "goto" or variable names as targets in a case statement!

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

The world doesn't want/deserve a real Ai.

axtens_bruce said...

The world will get the AI it deserves. It was probably an AI that suggested burning the vinyl chloride that spilled from the crashed rail tankers in East Palestine, Ohio.

I suspect Bruce is right here. (Sidetracking again, but I don't see any indication of a deliberate burn of vinyl clhoride in the Ohio derailment - it seems like the fires were just a result of the accidental crash.)

After the crash, when several tanks were still heating up due to nearby external fires, they were breached to pour/vent thru the controlled-cut small orfice rather than dealing with an uncontrollable BLEVE. Previous BLEVE of oil tankers on railroads resulted in launching a tank car a mile away. In a totally uncontrolled manner. IIRC, there's a Youtube of Mythbusters (or similar org) causing a domestic water heater BLEVE.

Kat

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25. Re: A controversial topic

axtens_bruce said...
  • The world will get the AI it deserves. It was probably an AI that suggested burning the vinyl chloride that spilled from the crashed rail tankers in East Palestine, Ohio.

I hope you had a better , , , err.. that didn't sound right, , , i hope you had a fine birthday celebration.

Is it right to have the brightest mind in the known universe housed in a metal box, with it having no control over anything, and being worked over by humans who are biologically incapable of understanding the simplest concepts?

Re burning the spill at railroad in Ohio: there were two events: 1) crash caused some tanks to rupture, fire ensued. 2) several tanks were intentionally breached to prevent multiple BLEVE events. That said, "controlled burns" are almost never controlled.

Kat

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26. Re: A controversial topic

katsmeow said...

Those that didn't learn the empire fails, will form a new empire.

Exactly.

katsmeow said...

Those that don't learn programming language with X features will not progress in new and exciting ways,

What I meant could be summed up as below,

"Those that don't learn that programming the language with these X features will not be able to progress the language in new and exciting ways,"

Basically looking at languages that were more successful (Ruby, Python, Nim) and trying to learn from them.

katsmeow said...

will author another language just like all the rest. Tomorrow, another language will be formed, with the same X features,

I guess the issue here is one of catchup, who outside the community would take the language seriously if it's so far behind?

katsmeow said...

in an attempt to do something new different.

As it relates to OE, it was more about getting to baseline. Sure, OE has the potential to be different (arguably already is different), but also see above.

katsmeow said...

This is "heritage", and "common sense",

Actually, I feel like this is a statement that's either provable as fact or open to being disproved.

katsmeow said...

and anyone trying to change it is just looking for a fight and should be exterminated.

Not at all. For example, OE remains FOSS - if someone thinks they can do better, we don't try to stop them. (Thinking about Shian_Lee's OE 3.x continuation here.)

Alas, there's the practical matter of being hard to contribute to (C having such a high learning curve). I do have higher hopes for Phix, though.

katsmeow said...

I did very little to change mIRC, what i was referring to here was even mentioning i use the language to do tasks Eu could not do, and OE still cannot do.

Ah, gotcha. Yep, use the tool that works best. (Not worth pointing out that there are either workarounds or implementations for all the ones mentioned on this thread, albeit being nix-only in some cases.)

katsmeow said...

The biggest downside to mIRC is it can "expire" and require another payment to use again, essentially holding your existing code hostage

That's a pretty big downside, IMVHO.

katsmeow said...

(this funds ongoing development of the language)

Hmm. Considering what's happening to OE, when it's lacking those funds, suddenly this seems a lot more justifiable.

Though, counterpoints: Phix, Nim.

katsmeow said...

(same as all Tesla crashes may be caused by drunk drivers).

I think it's completely different. Money is one thing, but risking human life? Also, I'm aware of several Tesla crashes involving fatalities where alcohol was known not to be involved.

katsmeow said...

Please note, i am not singling out Tesla, i opened with the generic "self-driving cars".

Fair point, I just brought it up as that was the company mentioned in the article.

katsmeow said...

Then they shouldn't be telling me they do not like my IP address every time i try to fix something, or when i try to register to be a known authorised fixer.

That only happened to me when I was using public wifi at a library. Hmm, I wonder if there might be more going on behind the scenes... anyways, I digress.

katsmeow said...

It's like using the [Preview] button when replying to a post here, it works only if you've allowed ajax.google.com somewhere, because someone wanted it that way, so Google gets to know i posted a reply.

Agreed, that's why I pushed jeremy back in the day to allow preview to work without javascript. I just disable it and can safely preview without issue or fear.

katsmeow said...

That's called "CYA reporting", shedding liability, deflecting accusations.

Perhaps. But I can certainly understand reporters not wanting to jump the gun if the official investigation hasn't determined what happened yet.

jimcbrown said...

Died from injuries that happened in the wreck, while in the hospital, yes.

katsmeow said...

Died instantly on impact, passenger had to be cut out of the car.

Ah, less than stellar reporting then.

Because it's possible to be cut out of the car, alive, and then be taken to a hospital and die of your injuries there - that's why accurate reporting is so important, so we know which situation is which.

katsmeow said...

It didn't do anything useful, It was a cross between make-work and practice moving room-sized multi-ton electronics. Might have been a case of "Midway has a defect in their water distiller" too. Either way i was surprised by the size of a single-bit flipflop module using two 12AX7.

Fascinating - thank you for that bit of computer and US military history.

katsmeow said...

Well, goodie for the work. I was laughed at for thinking some cancers can be caused by viruses,

That's quite ridiculous, considering that this was known as early as 1911 - see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3501656/

katsmeow said...

for putting a motor and batteries in a VW in 1975, or that improved solar panels could be a great idea. that putting common access radio-telephone towers at various overlapping locations was a grand idea and i wasted my time building a demo on the handy 27Mhz channels and fleshing out a business model for it, etc etc.

I know it's not much consolation, but at least you are in good company? Reminds me of how Hedy Lamarr never saw a penny from her invention that now powers things like GPS and WiFi, https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/hedy-lamarr

katsmeow said...

that there was a future in computers,

Again, not much consolation, but better off than poor John von Neumann?

katsmeow said...

There was the fiascos of saying in 1972 that gasoline prices were going over a dollar per gallon,

Should have shorted gasoline and let the money do the talking for you. But hey, you know what they say about hindsight.

katsmeow said...

Did you know solar panels are extremely loud,

I thought they were super quiet. I wonder if these folks are getting confused with windmills.

katsmeow said...

and using them is amorally stealing electricity from the powerco (i am repeatedly told this shirt)?

Nope. I wonder if these folks got it backwards (with solar power homeowners getting paid in rebates from the powerco for putting surplus electricity back into the power grid).

katsmeow said...

It's like having "goto" or variable names as targets in a case statement!

As vigorous as these debates got here, I don't think they ever got that bad!

katsmeow said...

Is it right to have the brightest mind in the known universe housed in a metal box, with it having no control over anything, and being worked over by humans who are biologically incapable of understanding the simplest concepts?

Fortunately, I think those working directly on AI aren't the same ones who don't understand stuff like solar power.

katsmeow said...

After the crash, when several tanks were still heating up due to nearby external fires, they were breached to pour/vent thru the controlled-cut small orfice rather than dealing with an uncontrollable BLEVE. Previous BLEVE of oil tankers on railroads resulted in launching a tank car a mile away. In a totally uncontrolled manner. IIRC, there's a Youtube of Mythbusters (or similar org) causing a domestic water heater BLEVE.

Kat

katsmeow said...

Re burning the spill at railroad in Ohio: there were two events: 1) crash caused some tanks to rupture, fire ensued. 2) several tanks were intentionally breached to prevent multiple BLEVE events. That said, "controlled burns" are almost never controlled.

Kat

Thanks! With the right terminology, I was able to find sources that confirmed the above, e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/we-shouldnt-need-body-bags-to-learn-from-ohios-train-disaster/2023/02/17/6f5cc346-aeb4-11ed-b0ba-9f4244c6e5da_story.html

katsmeow said...

Today, i live in poverty, unable to replace my 34 year old car, and fearful of deploying the 40 solar panels i keep in boxes inside.

You know what, I'm glad I met unkmar in this community to mentor me. He taught me the hardest lession - success in life often means being able to get other people to like you. I learned that before it was too late.

axtens_bruce said...

<snip>

katsmeow said...

I hope you had a better , , , err.. that didn't sound right, , , i hope you had a fine birthday celebration.

Seconded.

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27. Re: A controversial topic

jimcbrown said...
katsmeow said...

and using them is amorally stealing electricity from the powerco (i am repeatedly told this shirt)?

Nope. I wonder if these folks got it backwards (with solar power homeowners getting paid in rebates from the powerco for putting surplus electricity back into the power grid).

For most customers, injecting power back into the line is so expensive, it never pays back. The powerco has simply set requirements no one can meet.

Here, and possibly Georgia, the powerco got permission to assess a kwh rating for any panel(s) attached to a residence, and bill the customer for that amount of power. The theory being, during unscheduled cloudy weather, the powerco must have generating capacity turning to deliver the power missing from the non-functioning panel(s). This is essentially the powerco being used as a UPS for the solar array. The customer has no say in the matter, and the billing is monthly whether summer sunny days or winter.

I have acreage, and was not going to attach to the house. It is sub-optimal for orientation and architecture anyhow, and i can re-point the array if it pivots on flat ground. And, lightning happens here. Plus, normal batteries, well, deteriorate fast over time when used heavily. However, a gravity battery is a "research project" that doesn't impact the house power. <coff>

The biggest issues for me is the outstanding belief they are so noisey as to be a constant harrassment to the neighbors and their dogs, and the assumed theft of electricity.

Kat

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28. Re: A controversial topic

I found this the other day on the Nim board, and it has been kinda nagging at me and ringing round my head:

guzba said...

Sorry for being blunt but I strongly dislike people that do nothing and throw expectations at others. it is not helpful or productive.

Of course I get where (s)he's coming from, although we do want to hear what people want, but when someone gets annoyed that way,
I personally find it deeply disturbing, pretty much the sign of a sociopath, and something that digs up distressing memories of times
when I have done exactly the same myself, which is "blame everyone else" for their(/my) own inadequacies, inability, and inaction.

Now that really was't meant with any malice, though I'm quite sure it will be taken that way, and obviously I hesitated to say
anything at all, but it started gnawing at me in a way that keeping quiet about it was just not healthy for me anymore.

It was also stopping me from saying this: I just want it to go on record that I think multiple includes are utterly ridiculous.

include dog.e as bill 
include dog.e as ben 

(plus no doubt include statements within a loop and other madness[1]) is supposedly somehow much better than

include dog.e 
sequence my_dogs = {new_dog("bill"), 
                    new_dog("ben")} 

For me at least that is exactly the same as saying this "sequence" nonsense is just complete rubbish.

How many times do you think the average Euphoria program includes (say) misc.e, and how many programs do you think would stop
working if every include generated another separate instance, and what happens when filea includes fileb at the same time as
fileb including filea? It is not just daft and of no practical merit whatsoever, it is fundamentally impossible (to do "right"[2]).

[1] and within a routine, somehow magically sidestepping arbitrarily-nested routines, and of course with "variable namespaces".
I think everyone here knows I am no fan of namespaces, or rather using namespaces for anything other than their intended purpose
which is to resolve ambiguity, and certainly not in favour of deliberately introducing ambiguity so that namespaces are needed.
The Phix compiler, at least, applies common sense (ie locality) to automatically resolve conflicts whenever it can, which will almost
inevitably lead to some poor future maintainer making a wrong assumption about some code where namespaces have (accidentally)
been left off because they (presumably) did not carefully inspect every single line of code in the same way that the compiler has.
[2] where there are currently just over eight billion and counting completely different interpretations of "right".

PS footnote number one ran just a little off track there, didn't it?

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29. Re: A controversial topic

petelomax said...

I found this the other day on the Nim board, and it has been kinda nagging at me and ringing round my head:

guzba said...

Sorry for being blunt but I strongly dislike people that do nothing and throw expectations at others. it is not helpful or productive.

Of course I get where (s)he's coming from, although we do want to hear what people want, but when someone gets annoyed that way,
I personally find it deeply disturbing, pretty much the sign of a sociopath, and something that digs up distressing memories of times
when I have done exactly the same myself, which is "blame everyone else" for their(/my) own inadequacies, inability, and inaction.

Perhaps they were contributing in other ways? I contributed $300 and some hdds towards work on a raspi, in an attempt to allocate best tools/person/resources for which task. Sadly, i still must work on the raspi to get what i want while the house roof leaks, so swapping stuff can still be a dead end. And i have noticed several people not here any more because they contributed what no one wanted and then left to contribute elsewhere.

petelomax said...

Now that really was't meant with any malice, though I'm quite sure it will be taken that way, and obviously I hesitated to say
anything at all, but it started gnawing at me in a way that keeping quiet about it was just not healthy for me anymore.

It was also stopping me from saying this: <snip>

It was common for many years, i'd bite my tongue among humans, try to be nice, and need to park off the road and barf before i got home, from the stress of their preconcieved notions pressed on me. And before breakfast the next morning.

petelomax said...

How many times do you think the average Euphoria program includes (say) misc.e, and how many programs do you think would stop
working if every include generated another separate instance, and what happens when filea includes fileb at the same time as
fileb including filea? It is not just daft and of no practical merit whatsoever, it is fundamentally impossible (to do "right"[2]).

I am pretty sure i had to do that at least once so the vars in each could be seen by the other. Also, if each include was a true separate instance, how would that affect re-entrancy, and multiple task.e executions of the same include?

Kat

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