OpenEuphoria

Re: Euphoria vs. other programming languages

• Posted by Tom Mar 05, 2009
• 1597 views

Here is a updated version of "Yet Another..."

Tom

Yet Another Programming Language?

Euphoria is a very high-level programming language. It is unique amongst a crowd of conventional languages.

First, Euphoria delivers the "expected" features of a modern language:

1. open source
2. free for personal and commercial use
3. produces royalty-free, stand-alone, programs
4. multi-platform--Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, OSX, and even Dos
5. provides a choice of multi-platform gui toolkits: IUP, GTK, wxWindows
6. features a Windows IDE and gui library written in Euphoria
7. syntax-colored editors, profiling, and tracing of code
8. dynamic memory allocation and efficient garbage collection
9. interfacing to existing C libraries and databases
10. well-documented, lots of example source-code, and an enthusiastic forum
11. edit and run convenience

Euphoria is unique

What makes Euphoria unique is a design that uses an atom/sequence paradigm for data-types. An atom is single numeric value (either a number or character), while a sequence is a collection of numeric values (atoms, strings, nested sequences, ... ).

What follows from this design are some advantages over conventional languages:

1. the language syntax is smaller--and thus easier to learn
2. the language syntax is consistent--and thus easier to program
3. routines are more generic--a routine used for strings may also be applied to any data structure
4. a higher level view of programming
5. sequences are dynamicyou may create and destroy at willand modify them to any size and complexity

Euphoria has qualities that conventional languages wish to have:

1. Euphoria programs are considerably faster than conventional interpreted languages--Euphoria makes a better website server
2. Euphoria programs can be translated then compiled as C programs--fast programs become even faster
3. Euphoria lets you write multi-tasking programs--independent of the platform you are using
4. Euphoria has meaningful error messages--it is easier to fix mistakes
5. Euphoria has an elegant design--Euphoria programmers enjoy programming in Euphoria

As a //first// programming language:

1. Easy to learn, easy to program
2. No limits as to what you can program
3. Euphoria programming skills will enhance learning other languages

As an //extension// to languages you already know:

1. A fast, flexible, and powerful language
2. Euphoria, the language you will prefer to program in

But, my favorite language is ...

You will find that Euphoria programmers are also knowledgeable in other languages. I find that the more tools you have (saws and hammers, or programming languages) the richer you are. Picking the correct tool is part of the art of programming. It will remain true that some people can program better in their favorite language rather than an arguably superior language.

Give Euphoria a try, and discover why it has enthusiastic supporters.