Frustrated again!
- Posted by ChrisB (moderator) May 18, 2015
- 2686 views
Hi
I've just come across the same old problem in euphoria again, and once again I've become side tracked from what I was trying to do.
I updated a while ago from 4.05 to 4.1, and didn't check out every single thing that worked under 4.05, so when I came to do something in 4.1, I found that it was broken, and I've got sidetracked delving into includes, and following the broken trace. Much as I enjoy doing this, I can imagine how this can become very frustrating to newcomers to the language. I do most of my programming on the command line on Linux, hence the delay in discovering the issue on Windows.
(What I am doing is related to EuWinGUI, and found that I couldn't open a project, traced it to ggv() getglobalvariables in euwingui.ew, and linked to the shim that allowed the reading of cpp dlls - I know)
My point (wish) is this - Eu should be a modern language, with an integrated IDE, and an integrated tool kit bundled with the download and installation, and even a gui designer, and while I hate to say this, the emphasis should be on windows. Most people using Linux will have some computing savvy, and will relish the challenge of getting stuff working. Its all very well having multiple toolkits available, but it fragments the language, and whenever there's an update, there's a risk of breaking something which may not be noticed for a while if we are all off using our own preferred toolkit.
Yes, we should have the option to use the toolkit of our choice, but the default should be included with the installation, so that an update updates the entire installation, without putting an extra workload on the newcomer, which could be nothing but off putting.
WxEuphoria, and GTK are undoubtedly the best looking, but sorry, they aren't the easiest to use. Redy is the most promising in terms of programming, but has a 'dated' feel (don't be offput Ryan, this is a great piece of work, I'm putting myself in the shoes of the casual programming browser). WEE should be the default editor, bundled with the install program. And we should be just able to plonk some widgets on a window, link up a few lines of code, and have ourselves a working program ( I realise this is more than likely some way off). Euphoria is such a beautiful language, to not put our efforts in this direction is surely missing an opportunity to catch many new users.
Perhaps the devs are looking at this the wrong way - perhaps Euphoria should be bundled with WEE, rather than the other way round - so you update WEE, and you update the Euphoria files too, rather than having to do it separately. Eu could still run independently, for the more experienced programmers (own editor, command line on Linux, whichever toolkit they wanted and so on), but there would be little extra work required to get a functional programming environment.
Anyway, just some late night, mildly frustrated musings. Off to bed now.
Chris
