Re: Easy Euphoria a Fairy tale
- Posted by Icy_Viking May 29, 2015
- 4200 views
In short, I fully agree with what andi49 said.
<rant>
In my case, I could never go past the stage of beginner precisely because of the lack of resources and the poor and stagnant ecosystem which is around Euphoria.
Don't get me wrong, Euphoria IS a nice and lovely language, and it is easy and powerful too. BUT how do you expect people to learn and adopt it if you don't make things easy for them? When there are practically no resources for beginners?
Now, there is a manual, there are lots of code examples at Rosetta code, and there is a lot of code the the Archive. And yet, none of this caters for the needs of a beginner, apart for the manual, which BTW is extremely terse and technical. What we would really need is a book, with an up-to-date Euphoria programming course.
Oh yes, you may find brief articles or webpages which teach you Euphoria's basic constructs (which you will learn in three days or less), but beyond that point... nothing. The website's Wikis, which were meant to contain something of this kind, are all but deserted.
Beginners are unable to benefit from the massive amount of code stored in the Archives, because there is a stepping stone which is missing: some nice tutorial which explains how Euphoria works, possibly featuring a real mid-sized program, with commented code. That is, something which takes you by hand and explains to you how the language works. How else is a beginner expected to learn?
Moreover, most of the people who post on this website are old-timers, with in-depth knowledge of Euphoria's inner workings. Most of the posts are quite technical. Sorry about this, but they seem oblivious to the beginners' needs.
It was suggested in the past that we may have a beginners' section on this forum. But, come to think about it, who would post in it? There are practically no beginners. I am one of them, and I am sticking around hoping that things will change in the future. Hoping in an expansion of the Euphoria's ecosystem... which would make things a bit more approachable and friendly to beginners.
</rant>
I've always thought a book on Euphoria would be nice. It would be helpful for beginners. I know there is A Beginner's Guide To Euphoria and another called Euphoric Mysteries. Of course what we'd need is an up to date book on Euphoria, something covering Euphoria 4.0.5 or 4.1.0, one that covers the new features added to Euphoria. I've had ideas for writing a book myself. I also think a beginner's section would also be good for Euphoria.
