1. To: Dave, Derek, Dan, Rob and all who are upgrading EU
Hi All you fine folks,
Ive only been here for a month now but I'd like my two cents entered
into how some want to change the way sequences, objects, atoms
are acted upon by comparison operators etc.
The speed and ease of learning EU is the reason I love EU.but
not for the sake of speed
But Im concerned that if you go the road of letting the interperter
decide how a sequence, atom, object etc. should be compared in rational
statements and ETC, you are going to slow down EU to a crawl. Im sure
that is why Rob made it the way it is to help keep the processing
speed up.
Learning to write correct if statements is NOT that hard even for me
and Im just an old grandpa.
It seems to me if you try to make EU look and run like, Ahem!, Microsoft
basic then we might as well go back to it. NOT!!!
It looks to me like that people who want to write fast programs
would be willing to sacrifice a moment of time to learn to use
sequences, atoms and the works.!
There is no way you can make rational statemnts which decide how
to act on a variable without slowing down the process. Think about it.
I know that much and Im not a professional programmer.
Thanks
Gene
2. Re: To: Dave, Derek, Dan, Rob and all who are upgrading EU
Gene,
Just to keep things straight: ROB is upgrading Euphoria; many on the list
offer suggestions & wishes.
Matt Lewis, Derek Parnell, David Cuny, Wolfgang Fritz, Davi Figueiredo,
Renzo Beggia, Travis Beaty, & Thomas Parslow are upgrading Win32Lib (my name
is included at SourceForge as a "developer" by *accident*).
I'm just reporting bugs & offering suggestions to Judith regarding her
upgrade of the Win32Lib IDE, (and working on an upgrade to my "WinDemos"
gateway to Win32Lib examples), and asking questions.
Dan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gene Mannel" <mgene2 at GJ.NET>
To: <EUPHORIA at LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2000 4:34 AM
Subject: To: Dave, Derek, Dan, Rob and all who are upgrading EU
> Hi All you fine folks,
>
> Ive only been here for a month now but I'd like my two cents entered
> into how some want to change the way sequences, objects, atoms
> are acted upon by comparison operators etc.
>
> The speed and ease of learning EU is the reason I love EU.but
> not for the sake of speed
>
> But Im concerned that if you go the road of letting the interperter
> decide how a sequence, atom, object etc. should be compared in rational
> statements and ETC, you are going to slow down EU to a crawl. Im sure
> that is why Rob made it the way it is to help keep the processing
> speed up.
>
> Learning to write correct if statements is NOT that hard even for me
> and Im just an old grandpa.
>
> It seems to me if you try to make EU look and run like, Ahem!, Microsoft
> basic then we might as well go back to it. NOT!!!
>
> It looks to me like that people who want to write fast programs
> would be willing to sacrifice a moment of time to learn to use
> sequences, atoms and the works.!
>
> There is no way you can make rational statemnts which decide how
> to act on a variable without slowing down the process. Think about it.
> I know that much and Im not a professional programmer.
>
> Thanks
> Gene
3. Re: To: Dave, Derek, Dan, Rob and all who are upgrading EU
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gene Mannel" <mgene2 at GJ.NET>
To: <EUPHORIA at LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2000 10:34 PM
Subject: To: Dave, Derek, Dan, Rob and all who are upgrading EU
>
> But Im concerned that if you go the road of letting the interperter
> decide how a sequence, atom, object etc. should be compared in rational
> statements and ETC, you are going to slow down EU to a crawl. Im sure
> that is why Rob made it the way it is to help keep the processing
> speed up.
This is a concern, Gene. I too would be worried, but I truely believe that
you wouldn't notice any speed changes. I, just like yourself, don't have any
data to back this up. However, having written compilers and interpreters
myself, and making some guesses about how Euphoria works, any overhead in
processing sequence comparisons compared to processing function calls (as
one does now) would barely be noticed. Currently (and I'm guessing here), if
one writes "if seq1 = seq2", Euphoria performs the sequence operation then
decides, that because the result is a sequence, the "if" statement must
crash.
Robert has two (at least) ways of making the proposed change. The first is
to check for a sequence prior to doing the comparison operation and if
found, run the compare() function instead. The second is to perform the
comparision and then see if at least one 0 exists in the result sequence.
This second one also means that Robert will have to extend the sequence
operation processing so that it allows for sequences of unequal lengths.
> It seems to me if you try to make EU look and run like, Ahem!, Microsoft
> basic then we might as well go back to it. NOT!!!
Well, in my humble opinion, Euphoria has a Basic parentage. Most of the
keywords and behaviour are very Basic like. It also has borrowed (and
extended) the sequence idea that I first saw in CA-Realizer (which also
looks like Basic).
> It looks to me like that people who want to write fast programs
> would be willing to sacrifice a moment of time to learn to use
> sequences, atoms and the works.!
People who want to write programs that run fast use assembler.
People who want to quickly write programs use Euphoria (or similar scripting
languages).
In many ways, choosing a programming language is like the old joke: Fast,
Small, Easy - pick any two.
> There is no way you can make rational statemnts which decide how
> to act on a variable without slowing down the process. Think about it.
> I know that much and Im not a professional programmer.
With the lack of hard data we can't make a cost/benefit assessment. Maybe
Robert can offer an opinion on this aspect.
------
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia
(Vote [1] The Cheshire Cat for Internet Mascot)
4. Re: To: Dave, Derek, Dan, Rob and all who are upgrading EU
> Well, in my humble opinion, Euphoria has a Basic parentage. Most of the
> keywords and behaviour are very Basic like. It also has borrowed (and
> extended) the sequence idea that I first saw in CA-Realizer (which also
> looks like Basic).
>
Hi All
I think that euphoria is not close to basic,I have programed in basic for
many years now (C64,Liberty,Gw) what I like about euphoria and this is why
I bought it is that thier are no Random files in it,it is a good lang to do
Database's in fast ,Easy (unless you came from Basic!!).My problem is that
euphoria is so far from basic that I have problems programing in Euphoria
because of it,if euphoria was close to basic then I would be able to pick
it up fast,but it is not,just my opion.
On to a diff subject Does anyone know of a good book on Linux,I
Really,Really,Really,Really need one.I have been trying to learn linux but
the help files that come with it is really (to the tenth power) bad.I think
you have to be a MIT grad to figure it out.Also I have asked for help from
Red Hat and no luck there,I guess they don't support thier product.Thanks
for the help
David Mosley (Still lost in linux land)
pmosley at infoway.lib.nm.us
5. Re: To: Dave, Derek, Dan, Rob and all who are upgrading EU
Gene Mannel wrote:
> But Im concerned that if you go the road of
> letting the interperter decide how a sequence,
> atom, object etc. should be compared in rational
> statements and ETC, you are going to slow down
> EU to a crawl. Im sure that is why Rob made it the
> way it is to help keep the processing speed up.
When I first began coding in Euphoria, that was my assumption as well.
But it's not true. Euphoria *already* knows the types involved in an
operation, so it can easily decide to generate integer/atom/sequence
optimized code. Don't take my word for it - look at the code generated by
the Euphoria to C translator. It generates different code for adding
integers than it does for adding atoms and sequences.
> It seems to me if you try to make EU look and run like,
> Ahem!, Microsoft basic then we might as well go back
> to it. NOT!!!
Why choose to say 'Microsoft' Basic, other to stir up anti-Microsoft
sentiment? And why choose Basic, when there are a host of other well
established languages that have similar functionality? Shouldn't features be
considered for their face value, not on their supposed parentage?
The irony is that, during the short-circuit discussion, the complaint was
that people were "trying to turn Euphoria into C".
> It looks to me like that people who want to write
> fast programs would be willing to sacrifice a moment
> of time to learn to use sequences, atoms and the works!
Programming languages exists for coders, not the other way around.
> There is no way you can make rational statements which
> decide how to act on a variable without slowing down the
> process.
There's no reason to think that adding this functionality would result in
slower code. This isn't just speculation, since Robert has, in previous
posts, noted that Euphoria can and does generate different internal code at
"compile" time, based on the type of the variable.
-- David Cuny
6. Re: To: Dave, Derek, Dan, Rob and all who are upgrading EU
On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, David Mosley wrote:
....
> On to a diff subject Does anyone know of a good book on Linux,I
> Really,Really,Really,Really need one.I have been trying to learn linux but
> the help files that come with it is really (to the tenth power) bad.I think
> you have to be a MIT grad to figure it out.Also I have asked for help from
> Red Hat and no luck there,I guess they don't support thier product.Thanks
> for the help
The man files are _really_ bad, in most cases. I can, however, recommend highly
the book "Beginning Linux Programming 2nd Edition" by Stones, Matthew, et
al...Wrox Press, ISBN 1-861002-97-1
I bought this recently, and was delighted to find that it covers everything
from basic shell commands and working with files all the way thru writing
device drivers, covering threads, pipes, sockets, programming for X, and much
more along the way, in a highly readable style.
Well worth the $33.95, I'd say.
Regards,
Irv
7. Re: To: Dave, Derek, Dan, Rob and all who are upgrading EU
- Posted by Gene Mannel <mgene2 at GJ.NET>
Oct 11, 2000
-
Last edited Oct 12, 2000
On Wed, 11 Oct 2000 08:26:44 -0700, David Cuny <dcuny at LANSET.COM> wrote:
snip
>
>Why choose to say 'Microsoft' Basic, other to stir up anti-Microsoft
>sentiment? And why choose Basic, when there are a host of other well
>established languages that have similar functionality? Shouldn't features
be
>considered for their face value, not on their supposed parentage?
>
snip
I did sound a little out of line there, Im sorry about that
but, my intent was not to slam Microsoft but rather was using
it as an example. Im not familiar with the others.
I wrote the orignal message about five oclock this morning only
because the idea was kinda heavy on my mind and wanted to express
my thoughts.
And I am happy about the opinions I got from all of you.
I wasnt trying to slam any of you. I read most everything
that gets posted and I've got a high opinion of all of you
who are working on the project. In fact Im a bit jealous I
dont have the experience to help out.
Thanks,
Gene
