Re: Keywords and Namesapces
- Posted by Vinoba Oct 10, 2011
- 40123 views
I will not bother to answer most of his comments as we are very far apart in our thinking and approach. However, i will try and answer this comment.
Matt Lewis said: "When programming, one typically has to type."
That is the crux of my mention of IDE, that types for you. You rejected it outright without thinking about it and without thinking about how our first conversations started here (Recall Unicode).
If you have gone through the intricacies of typing in different languages, if you have done real work with Unicode as applied to all languages INCLUDING languages FROM "EAST OF SUEZ" a mental and physical barrier which seems to baffle most Westerners and obstruct their thinking, then only would you realize the beauty of my statement ""When programming, one does not have to necessarily type everything or even most of the things in the program." The IDE we are using was written in HLA (High Level Assembler) two years ago in another class by another professor (i.e. under his direction). Last year we extended it somewhat for Unicode. This year's group is discussing in depth scripting and various techniques, BUT IN ALL DISCUSSIONS, IT IS MY DIRECTION to them that they do not forget the united nations of the Languages of the world.
As to advertising a commercial product, the IDE we have is NOT for sale and is NOT a commercially available product. I was hoping to get to use wxEuphoria to see if I can bring the IDE to a little more understandable level to the newer group of programmers.
As to the adverse comments on APL, long before the rest of the programming world had even dreamt about these things, APL had
1. Complete array usage (3 7 12 + 14 2 8). Applied also to 2 and 3 dimensional matrix. Yes I know Euphoria has it, because the original author of Euphoria was APL trained. I am talking about the late 70's.
2. The symbols used were a direct result of the need to execute more functions with the limited amount of ANSI character set.
3. The unique simplicity of line interpretation (right to left) without priorities. Even to this day, I have difficulty remembering precedence, because I am jumping between too many languages. In APL I did not have to remember priorities as there was only one -RIGHT TO LEFT.
4. Workspaces, a much later invention is Namespaces, encompassed a given set of files, functions and variables. Namespaces have not yet reached that level of sophistication.
5. Complete flexibility in the use and reuse of names for variables, e.g.
AA is assigned a single number and next line it can be assigned an array of literals.
Many of the modern day programmers do not like it - it is a matter of what format you are used to.
However much people promote C plus and F sharp, even Microsoft is sticking with Old is Gold and Visual Basic remains a good and solid foundation, and their other more elaborate products can use Visual basic addons.
As far as I am concerned my input on this subject and particularly about wxEuphora functions is over. I have had good enough input from you all, and realize that you all like the 1600 functions and I like the 600 functions my team has devised. The team is already talking about moving to Nokia's QT (for examples, etc in the same way as wxWidgets/wxEuphoria now ) and there is an equal force within the system asking them to stay with Randy Hyde's HLA and extend it. I think I am going to ask the class to look at Harbour with MiniGUI or with QT to study the variety of approaches.
Please be assured that I am NOT promoting any commercial product - I don't have one, not planning on one, and not prepared for one.
Thank you all for allowing me the use of this forum.
