1. Is Euphoria's beauty enduring or fleeting?
I agree with the point that Jason made about Euphoria code being beautiful.
I rediscovered some of my Euphoria code in a dusty directory after more than
a year and I was amazed at how clean, clear and legible it was. Even at first
glance, I could pretty much read it as if it were a text specification for
the code rather than code itself. Try doing that with C or C++!
I dabbled briefly with PowerBasic, but the syntax was so damn ugly I derived
no satisfaction from coding in it and my code was hard to read even after a
week, let alone a year. I don't know how PureBasic is by comparison, but I
have yet to see any dialect of Basic that comes close to Euphoria's elegance.
I am an avid photographer and would like to make an analogy here that may
find a resonance with some of this forum's readers - with apologies in
advance to those who have no idea what the hell I'm talking about ...
There are many cameras that take excellent pictures but certain cameras are
just more satisfying to use and as a photographer, I take better pictures
with those cameras not because they are "better" with regard to their ability
to collect light and focus it on a light-sensitive surface or even because
they offer more features. I take better pictures with those cameras because
of the effect that they have on me as the photographer. It's not even easy
to put your finger on why this is. It could be as simple as the way the
camera feels in my hands - but it's a real effect whose results are clearly
visible in my pictures.
I have noticed that my feelings about programming languages follow a very
similar pattern. I do write better code in Euphoria than I do in C because
there's a certain feeling of satisfaction that I get when "crafting" a
function in Euphoria. C's pointers, redirection and "suck it and see"
bounds checking make me feel like Mr. Scott who just patched up the
Enterprise's warp drive with duct tape and string - "she could get us
home Cap'n, but I can nae guarantee it!"
I'm not promoting or defending any method or ideology here and those who
have a coding deadline to meet for an important client who needed their new
Java web server yesterday, will probably dismiss all this as sentimental
twaddle that has little relevance to the "real world" of software
development, and that's fine. Horses for courses etc. This is just my $0.02.
On a cautionary note however and returning (for the last time I promise) to
my photography analogy. The Leica camera company had for decades made the
kind of excellent cameras I referred to - superb instruments with a kind of
mythical resonance that just demanded more of any photographer who held them
in their hands. So fixed were Leica however to their "tradition" that they
either failed to see that the world of photography was changing around them
or failed to see how their tradition of excellence and unrelenting pursuit
of perfection might be reinterpreted anew in the context of digital image
capture - the technology that was transforming photography.
When they finally did, it was too little, too late and Leica are now in
virtual receivership because the photography world embraced the new
technology and embraced the companies who could provide it.
I would hate to see Euphoria, a superb tool for crafting computer programs,
follow the same path through rigidity or a reluctance to evolve.
Thanks for bearing with me.
We now return to your normally scheduled programming ...
Gordon
2. Re: Is Euphoria's beauty enduring or fleeting?
Thanks Gordon,
Once in awhile someone just makes perfect sense... I second this logic.
Marc
3. Re: Is Euphoria's beauty enduring or fleeting?
I think its funny -- I actually find Euphoria code to be aesthetically pleasing
whereas I don't find Pascal to be beautiful. They are similar, but Pascal is
just uglier for some reason I can't put my finger on. Maybe its the colons.
I think C code *can* be pretty but C++ and Perl are ugly. Java is so-so.
There's just something about all of those dots and colons. The same with other
languages. I think that Euphoria looks like you expect it to look.
Gordon Webster wrote:
> I would hate to see Euphoria, a superb tool for crafting computer
> programs, follow the same path through rigidity or a reluctance to evolve.
It always seems to me as if RDS target audience are those who are beginning
programmers. QBasic is mostly obsolete. Right now Euphoria is good for writing
small to intermediate programs and when people move on from that they go to C,
Java, or something else.
The problem is that QBasic and Euphoria are no longer alone in the small to
intermediate languages world. New programmers jump directly into Java or C/C++
when they don't start with Javascript, Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, etc. These
languages aren't as good as Euphoria but they have more momentum and much larger
communities behind them.
To move forward, projects like win32lib and IDE would have to be polished up and
become a "part" of the language distribution, and they would have to consider
some changes in the language to enable better libraries to be written and easier
integration with C.
I think RDS is satisfied with the size of the language now and they are happy
with the niche that it fills. Euphoria as-is is good enough for 99% of things
that need to be done with it.
=====================================
Too many freaks, not enough circuses.
j.
4. Re: Is Euphoria's beauty enduring or fleeting?
Gordon Webster wrote:
>
> I agree with the point that Jason made about Euphoria code being beautiful.
>
> I rediscovered some of my Euphoria code in a dusty directory after more than
> a year and I was amazed at how clean, clear and legible it was. Even at first
> glance, I could pretty much read it as if it were a text specification for
> the code rather than code itself. Try doing that with C or C++!
I myself had the same had the same thing happen to me. Before Euphoria I
programmed primarily in C, Bash, Perl, BASIC, and Matlab. I didn't comment my
code much back then and going back to any of that code after a week or two would
be torture. With comments it was a little better but you don't comment the little
one-time scripts you write to search and move files around and such. Euphoria's
syntax is so neat that you actively have to try, it seems, to write obfuscated
code. In Perl, it's the opposite.
<snip>
> When they finally did, it was too little, too late and Leica are now in
> virtual receivership because the photography world embraced the new
> technology and embraced the companies who could provide it.
>
> I would hate to see Euphoria, a superb tool for crafting computer programs,
> follow the same path through rigidity or a reluctance to evolve.
>
> Thanks for bearing with me.
>
> We now return to your normally scheduled programming ...
I think everyone here would agree with you. Rob's reluctance to include every
feature under the sun is certainly justified (we don't want another Perl) but he
sometimes takes it too far. Unless Euphoria's completely open-source it won't get
taken seriously in the scripting/*nix community and it lacks the features that
professional software developers require. Due to it's nice, readable syntax it
would go better in the professional software development langauge catagory than
the scripting language catagory but the include file issues (files in different
directories are considered the same, no local includes, can't include a file
twice under different names) severly hinder it's adoption. Another issue is
threads and thread-safety. I personally have never used/needed "threads" in
anything other than my operating systems class but other people do use them a lot
and while giving Euphoria users access to syntax to use threads is a horrible
idea (at least for now) since it'll just add complexity and extra commands to the
langauge but making the interpreter thread-safe (so it can be used with thread
libraries) would be very beneficient.
However, as a counterargument to my statement, why isn't Eiffel bigger than C++?
C++ is, for the most part, THE language for professional software. Sure, some
people use VB, Java, Delphi, C, or Objective-C but most of them use C++. C++ is
ugly, convoluted, inconsistent, hard to debug, and very powerful. Eiffel is what
I would imagine an object-oriented Euphoria designed specifically for robust
software design could look like, it's clean, easy to read, and as powerful as
C++. So why isn't Eiffel bigger than C++? People constantly debate this but many
say that the lack of a good open-source Eiffel compiler (although SmartEiffel is
around know) and it's restricted syntax are the two biggest point against it.
Also, C++ has been around longer (though not by much) and builds on an even older
language everyone knows (C) where Eiffel looks almost completely new. Almost
anyone can read an un-commented Eiffel class and get a basic understanding of
what it does but if you asked a professional programmer that uses VB or Delphi to
look at a commented C++ class they might not have a clue what it does. So,
perhaps maybe other things are needed to hit the "mainstream" in regards to
programming languages.
5. Re: Is Euphoria's beauty enduring or fleeting?
Gordon Webster wrote:
> I agree with the point that Jason made about Euphoria code being beautiful.
>
> I rediscovered some of my Euphoria code in a dusty directory after more than
> a year and I was amazed at how clean, clear and legible it was. Even at first
> glance, I could pretty much read it as if it were a text specification for
> the code rather than code itself. Try doing that with C or C++!
>
> I dabbled briefly with PowerBasic, but the syntax was so damn ugly I derived
> no satisfaction from coding in it and my code was hard to read even after a
> week, let alone a year. I don't know how PureBasic is by comparison, but I
> have yet to see any dialect of Basic that comes close to Euphoria's elegance.
>
> I am an avid photographer and would like to make an analogy here that may
> find a resonance with some of this forum's readers - with apologies in
> advance to those who have no idea what the hell I'm talking about ...
>
> There are many cameras that take excellent pictures but certain cameras are
> just more satisfying to use and as a photographer, I take better pictures
> with those cameras not because they are "better" with regard to their ability
> to collect light and focus it on a light-sensitive surface or even because
> they offer more features. I take better pictures with those cameras because
> of the effect that they have on me as the photographer. It's not even easy
> to put your finger on why this is. It could be as simple as the way the
> camera feels in my hands - but it's a real effect whose results are clearly
> visible in my pictures.
>
> I have noticed that my feelings about programming languages follow a very
> similar pattern. I do write better code in Euphoria than I do in C because
> there's a certain feeling of satisfaction that I get when "crafting" a
> function in Euphoria.
I think an important point also is this: Concerning natural languages,
linguists say that we only can think what our language allows us to
think. I would not actually be surprised if this also would be true for
programming languages.
> C's pointers, redirection and "suck it and see"
> bounds checking make me feel like Mr. Scott who just patched up the
> Enterprise's warp drive with duct tape and string - "she could get us
> home Cap'n, but I can nae guarantee it!"
LOL! Wasn't it in the movie 'Sister Act II', where one of the nuns said:
"All we need in life is some duct tape and trust in God."?
> I'm not promoting or defending any method or ideology here and those who
> have a coding deadline to meet for an important client who needed their new
> Java web server yesterday, will probably dismiss all this as sentimental
> twaddle that has little relevance to the "real world" of software
> development, and that's fine. Horses for courses etc. This is just my $0.02.
>
> On a cautionary note however and returning (for the last time I promise) to
> my photography analogy. The Leica camera company had for decades made the
> kind of excellent cameras I referred to - superb instruments with a kind of
> mythical resonance that just demanded more of any photographer who held them
> in their hands. So fixed were Leica however to their "tradition" that they
> either failed to see that the world of photography was changing around them
> or failed to see how their tradition of excellence and unrelenting pursuit
> of perfection might be reinterpreted anew in the context of digital image
> capture - the technology that was transforming photography.
>
> When they finally did, it was too little, too late and Leica are now in
> virtual receivership because the photography world embraced the new
> technology and embraced the companies who could provide it.
Yes, it's a pity.
> I would hate to see Euphoria, a superb tool for crafting computer programs,
> follow the same path through rigidity or a reluctance to evolve.
Well spoken!
> Thanks for bearing with me.
>
> We now return to your normally scheduled programming ...
>
>
> Gordon
Regards,
Juergen
