1. Vision for the future...
I've been reading the recent posts regarding Euphoria and it's future
with much interest. I will say that some very good points have been
brought up by some people in this community that I respect. The person
I keep waiting to hear from on this subject is Rob himself and at this
point I'm not sure how to interpret the silence.
Rob, would it be possible for you to share with the community (your
customers) what your vision is for the future of Euphoria? Are you
wanting the language to become widespread or just a niche language with
a small number of users? What's your 1,3 and 5 year plans?
I feel some sort of response on RDS' part would be appropriate.
Thanks,
Jonas Temple
2. Re: Vision for the future...
On 15 Nov 2002, at 9:09, C. K. Lester wrote:
>
> > Rob, would it be possible for you to share with the community (your
> > customers) what your vision is for the future of Euphoria? Are you
> > wanting the language to become widespread or just a niche language with
> > a small number of users? What's your 1,3 and 5 year plans?
>
> I think having a comprehensive "Rob's Views" on the web site would also be
> nice. He could update it as time goes on and the community will be kept
> informed.
But he did that last year on this list.
Kat
3. Re: Vision for the future...
> > I think having a comprehensive "Rob's Views" on the web site would also
be
> > nice. He could update it as time goes on and the community will be kept
> > informed.
>
> But he did that last year on this list.
Having it on the website- kinda like a blog maybe!- would let newbies and
oldies alike who aren't on the mailing list see at any time what's goin' on
at RDS.
4. Re: Vision for the future...
- Posted by jbrown105 at speedymail.org
Nov 15, 2002
-
Last edited Nov 16, 2002
Actually, if none of you mind, .....
_start forward_
Date: 13 Feb 2002
From: Robert Craig <rds at RapidEuphoria.com>
Subject: Re: Version 2.4 and beyond
by inmta007.topica.com with SMTP; 13 Feb 2002 21:32:34 -0000
(InterMail vM.4.01.03.23 201-229-121-123-20010418) with SMTP
id <20020213213233.XCJR12383.tomts9-srv.bellnexxia.net@Rob>
charset="iso-8859-1"
Derek Parnell writes:
> I, for one, am not 100% sure of what are Euphoria's primary
requirements.
> I suspect that minimulism, speed, size, and platform choice have a part,
> but what I'd really like, Robert, is to see them clearly stated and
published
> under the RDS banner.
I don't have any hard and fast requirements or goals for Euphoria.
I'm an opportunist. All I can do is tell you what I like about Euphoria,
and what I feel about the current situation.
1. The core language.
I'm content with the size of the core language. I reject the
notion that it is "incomplete", or must be extended every year
with new features. Sure, there could be some dotting of i's
and crossing of t's, but any major new extension would have
to match the power to weight ratio of the current core.
Structures, classes, etc. are tempting, but I've studied them
carefully over the years, and decided not to include them.
When I look at grandiose languages, with 1000-page
manuals describing only the *core* language, I'm appalled.
People seem to be building all sorts of exotic, trendy
features, just so they can one-up the others. I suspect these
features are probably buggy, interact with each other in
unpredictable ways, are rarely used and poorly
understood by the masses. Python may have a lot of
"features", but if it's 34x slower than the Euphoria *interpreter*,
do you really care? I'm still waiting to see a fast action game
written in Python or Perl.
2. Libraries
One of the great strengths of Euphoria, compared to
Python, Perl, or other interpreted languages, is that
that the standard libraries, and most other
important add-on libraries, Win32Lib etc.,
are all (heaven forbid!) written in Euphoria.
In Python they have some kludgy API that lets
people write extensions in C, since it's obvious
to everyone that Python itself would be far too slow.
This means that *all* Euphoria users can potentially write
important libraries and tools, where performance matters,
whereas in Python, you need to be a C expert and
a Python expert, as well as learning the strange API.
This bodes well for the future expansion of cool things
that you can do in Euphoria.
While I think the core should remain small,
I'll be very happy to see lots of libraries developed.
3. Interpreter Source Code
Releasing the source code was a bit of a two-edged sword.
Although I'm giving away a few secrets, and there will be
several different versions of Euphoria created, I think this
is a powerful way to inject a blast of creativity into the
Euphoria world, and some source holders have
said that they will port to some interesting platforms.
(nothing to announce yet).
Ray Smith writes:
> I also think RDS should have an official documented plan for the
> future of Euphoria.
"planning" stifles creativity.
People should not focus so much on what I'm going to do.
My job is to stimulate, and harness the creativity of the
Euphoria community. I can't predict what's going to happen.
Think of a big pot of boiling, bubbling chemicals and DNA.
Things will either explode, or else some creature from
the "X Files" is going to crawl out. 
Regards,
Rob Craig
Rapid Deployment Software
http://www.RapidEuphoria.com
_end forward_
On 0, Brian Broker <bkb at cnw.com> wrote:
>
> Just search for "planning stifles creativity" by Robert Craig in Feb. of
> 2002...
>
>
http://www.listfilter.com/cgi-bin/esearch.exu?fromMonth=2&fromYear=7&toMonth
=2&toYear=7&postedBy=Robert+Craig&keywords=planning+stifles+creativity
>
>
> -- Brian
>
> Jonas Temple wrote:
> > Kat wrote:
> >
> > > But he did that last year on this list.
> >
> > I must have missed it. Rob, if you still have this could you repost
or
> > reproduce? I would be very interested to read...
> >
> > Jonas
> >
> >
jbrown,
_Linux_ Lover,
_Linux_ User 190064 running on _Linux_ Machine 84163
--
5. Re: Vision for the future...
Jonas Temple writes:
> Rob, would it be possible for you to share with the
> community (your customers) what your vision is for the
> future of Euphoria? Are you wanting the language to become
> widespread or just a niche language with a small number
> of users? What's your 1,3 and 5 year plans?
Of course I want to see Euphoria widely used by
lots of people.
I've never had a 1, 3 or a 5 year plan, (didn't they
disappear with the collapse of the former Soviet Union?).
I enjoy doing this kind of work, and I enjoy trying
to make money at it. I realize that some people
believe that programmers should not be allowed
to make money - they should be required to
donate their life's work for the good of society.
All I can tell you, is that I plan to have a 2.4 alpha-test
release within a couple of months. There probably
won't be any major new features, but there will be
a lot of important small improvements and speed-ups.
And there will be around 20 or so bug fixes.
Eventually more big features will come.
People who judge the progress of Euphoria by the
number of features added to the core language
with each release, are probably the same
people who judge the progress of an airplane design
by the number of tons of weight added with each revision.
I'm working full-time on Euphoria, minus a tiny
amount of time for ListFilter. I did work mainly
on ListFilter for a couple of months to get it up
and running. Unfortunately most of
my time does not (and never did) go into adding new features.
e.g. Web advertising, tech support, answering
e-mail enquiries and suggestions, reading the
huge number of messages posted on this list and
answering some of them, updating Recent User
Contributions, acquiring resources - I recently secured
a couple of hundred additional Mb and 15Gb
more bandwidth for Euphoria. I also recently moved
all the .zips on AOL over to RapidEuphoria, and all
the 45000 mailing list messages over to ListFilter.
Then there are the real and imagined bug reports
to investigate, packages to ship, business license
to renew, tax forms etc. etc.
You also shouldn't judge the size of the Euphoria
community just by the number of people on this list.
Not many people can tolerate the number of messages
per day that this list generates. I've found that most
people who register aren't on this list. Imagine a
parallel universe in which there's another Euphoria
list of equal size (say 400). Now imagine combining
the two universes, so that instead of 70 messages
per day we have 140 per day for 800 people.
How many of those 800 people would continue to
subscribe via e-mail?
So you see, it isn't a linear thing, and a lot depends
on how boring the messages are. We also lost a bunch
of Hotmail and AOL people because of SPAM detection
that people didn't know how to turn off.
Regards,
Rob Craig
Rapid Deployment Software
http://www.RapidEuphoria.com
6. Re: Vision for the future...
On 0, Robert Craig <rds at RapidEuphoria.com> wrote:
> Jonas Temple writes:
> > Rob, would it be possible for you to share with the
> > community (your customers) what your vision is for the
> > future of Euphoria? Are you wanting the language to become
> > widespread or just a niche language with a small number
> > of users? What's your 1,3 and 5 year plans?
>
> Of course I want to see Euphoria widely used by
> lots of people.
Many of us do.
>
> I've never had a 1, 3 or a 5 year plan, (didn't they
> disappear with the collapse of the former Soviet Union?).
Planning isn't silly really, but thats personal percpective, really.
>
> I enjoy doing this kind of work, and I enjoy trying
> to make money at it. I realize that some people
> believe that programmers should not be allowed
> to make money - they should be required to
> donate their life's work for the good of society.
If you're refering to my open-source Euphoria thing, its not about the
money
issue. Its the fact that some of us DO want to see a version of Eu with
all
the fancy features. I've tried to work with the core, using preproc, but
that
was not valued greatly. And I saw as you opened up the source (which I
thought
was a good move at the time BTW, IMHO anyways) but watched as few users
tried
out the features on the alt interpreters. Worse, they are all for
windows, and
thus I CANT try them out on my Linux system (unless I use something like
Wine).
An open-source euphoria is better because there is a good chance it will
gain more support, and can be ported faster. I am not asking you to make
Euphoria open-source (I did ask to have the source released, but the
price
and NDA I found acceptable, however I didnt forsee the lack of enthusiasm
for
modified interpreters), I'm just trying to give those of us a way to
coordinate
an effort to get the features we want in Eu (even if they aren't really
in Eu).
Also, just in case anyone thinks my project will put RDS out of business,
(of course, Rob himself knows that this is not the case at all) pexu is
unlikely to become a threat because, aside from trying to add new
features,
it will also have to keep playing catchup with the mainstream Eu, hence
pexu will not be a threat. (I could do something mean and place the code
under
the GPL, but instead tis going under the LGPL, so that if Rob decides to
take some code out of this project and place it into mainstream Eu, he
will be very welcome to.)
>
> All I can tell you, is that I plan to have a 2.4 alpha-test
> release within a couple of months. There probably
> won't be any major new features, but there will be
> a lot of important small improvements and speed-ups.
> And there will be around 20 or so bug fixes.
> Eventually more big features will come.
Really? Pray tell, what "big features" ?
Or does even you not know yet what is to come?
>
> People who judge the progress of Euphoria by the
> number of features added to the core language
> with each release, are probably the same
> people who judge the progress of an airplane design
> by the number of tons of weight added with each revision.
You have to admit, some of the requests are reasonable. Structures, for
example, or evals and gotos. Its your call to not add them, but this
leaves
some users unhappy, naturally.
>
> I'm working full-time on Euphoria, minus a tiny
> amount of time for ListFilter. I did work mainly
> on ListFilter for a couple of months to get it up
> and running. Unfortunately most of
> my time does not (and never did) go into adding new features.
> e.g. Web advertising, tech support, answering
> e-mail enquiries and suggestions, reading the
> huge number of messages posted on this list and
> answering some of them, updating Recent User
> Contributions, acquiring resources - I recently secured
> a couple of hundred additional Mb and 15Gb
> more bandwidth for Euphoria. I also recently moved
> all the .zips on AOL over to RapidEuphoria, and all
> the 45000 mailing list messages over to ListFilter.
> Then there are the real and imagined bug reports
> to investigate, packages to ship, business license
> to renew, tax forms etc. etc.
Heh, no wonder you don't add much new stuff to it, seeing how busy you
are.
>
> You also shouldn't judge the size of the Euphoria
> community just by the number of people on this list.
> Not many people can tolerate the number of messages
> per day that this list generates. I've found that most
> people who register aren't on this list. Imagine a
> parallel universe in which there's another Euphoria
> list of equal size (say 400). Now imagine combining
> the two universes, so that instead of 70 messages
> per day we have 140 per day for 800 people.
> How many of those 800 people would continue to
> subscribe via e-mail?
> So you see, it isn't a linear thing, and a lot depends
> on how boring the messages are. We also lost a bunch
> of Hotmail and AOL people because of SPAM detection
> that people didn't know how to turn off.
>
> Regards,
> Rob Craig
> Rapid Deployment Software
> http://www.RapidEuphoria.com
>
jbrown
Linux User:190064
Linux Machine:84163
--
