1. My EU story (long post).
I'd like to share my experience of learning to program and how I came to
use Euphoria to perhaps add a little perspective to the Eu marketing
discussion.
When I was 8 years old, I went to a family Christmas party where my
cousin had an Atari 800. He was playing a hangman game that someone in
his family had written. This got my curiosity piqued. A few months
later, my best friend from elementary school got a Tandy CoCo. That was
it -- I was hooked. I begged and saved; and by that summer (I was 9),
my family went to Radio Shack and bought the Color Computer 3. I read
the manual that came with it and started writing BASIC programs. I
don't even remember the first program I wrote, but I do remember the
thrill of watching my name scroll across the screen and playing "guess
the number". Over time, I bought more programming books (or got them as
presents), increased my skill, and started writing simple "chase the
dot" games. I started sharing some of my tricks with other kids at
school who had developed a similar interest in programming, and they
shared some of their tricks with me.
Over the years, I upgraded a couple times; learned C, Pascal, Assembly,
and a few other languages; and wrote all different kinds of programs
from text games to graphics games to database programs to full-fledged
POS systems -- all for the fun of it (and to build up a portfolio).
While in Jr. High, the math teacher asked me to help as a teacher's
aide for her programming class during my study hall. I readily agreed
and was happy to share my skills with anyone who asked. One of my
science fair projects was a simple programming course on PRINT, INPUT,
and FOR/NEXT loops. (It actually won 3rd prize in a regional
competition.) This combination of programming, learning, and teaching
continued throughout college.
When I finished college, I was looking for a shareware language that I
could use to continue my hobby since BASIC and C no longer came free on
new PCs. I loved the simplicity of Pascal, but I also relished the
power of C. One search on Compuserve revealed Euphoria. After reading
the docs and running a few examples, I found that Euphoria 1.4 was the
best of both worlds. What I have especially loved, and continue to
love, is the fact that I can write a complete ERP (now even in Windoze)
on a floppy disk! I dare anyone to try that with OWL or MFC.
One of my other pet projects was a natural language AI (similar to
Kat's Tigger, but more relational) that I had started in Pascal. When I
started to realize the power of sequences, I had to stop and completely
redesign the project to take advantage of this new power that didn't
exist in either Pascal or C. Over time, I have redesigned the project a
couple times, but have not put as much effort into it as I would like
(thanks to living in the real world where money is required to survive).
I still think Euphoria has the best of both worlds: simplicity and
power.
As for teaching Euphoria to someone else, there have been a lot of
societal changes that make programming a dying art. Granted, there are
still many people interested in programming for the money; but very few
who enjoy the simple thrill of creating a program by hand, fixing the
bugs, and watching it work. However, this is the group to whom Euphoria
will appeal the most. Any book on Euphoria must start with the basics
(installation) and teach fundamental programming skills (display, input,
and looping) before moving on to more advanced topics such as Windows
programming. But in all these things, the thrill of watching the code
you entered do what you want it to do, and the joy of changing it just
enough to make it your own, must still be there.
I apologize for the long post, but I hope that if each of us remembers
why we started programming in the first place, we can better reach those
for whom Euphoria is the perfect language.
Michael J. Sabal
