Re: Haiku OS and Euphoria
- Posted by GreenEuphorian Jan 12, 2014
- 2155 views
I believe a strong case could be made for porting Euphoria to Haiku.
Most applications on the Haiku OS are programmed in C++, which is off limits for beginners and hobby programmers. While there are also other languages that have been ported to Haiku, none of them is really used much, except for yab (an adaptation of Yabasic for Haiku). And here comes the point: Euphoria fits perfectly in yab's niche. It is interpreted, newbie-friendly, simple and ideal for beginners. Moreover, Euphoria is much more developed than yab, much faster and much more powerful. Yab's success (compared to other languages on Haiku) owes much to the fact that it provides built-in bindings to Haiku's native GUI, so a total newbie can easily write a silly program with all GUI elements (windows, buttons, tabs, etc.) in half an hour. On the other hand, complex programs have also been written in yab. Another aspect of yab's attractiveness (as well as of all BASIC dialects) is its readability and ease of use. Euphoria has nothing to envy in this regard.
For those of you who are not yet familiar with the Haiku OS, I strongly advise you to have a look at it. I strongly believe that Euphoria would have great chances of being adopted as the choice language for Haiku's beginner/hobby programmers. Of course, this is not to put down Euphoria's capabilities, which are much more extended.
Moreover, yab has not been developed much lately, and anyway it lacks many features that Euphoria can provide. Bottomline: Euphoria could easily take over.
A side question: how difficult would it be to add to Euphoria *some* support for the C++-based Haiku API (at least for the GUI)? The success of Euphoria on Haiku would very much depend on this...
I look forward to reading your comments, especially from the developers.
