The Euphoria Community (long)
- Posted by budmeister1 at JUNO.COM
Mar 28, 2000
Hello everyone,
I've been following the various "offtopic" threads very closely, and
although
I usually try to stay away from non-programming topics on this list,
I feel that I should toss my 2 cents into the incinerator on this one ;)
(Note: most of this is directed in the general direction of Everett)
[Lack of Documentation]
Robert designed Euphoria to be a simple, easy to learn language. I
think the manual reflects that, and he's done a fine job of not making
it so convoluted that non-programmers can't read it, but still being
fairly
clear.
The whole point of the manual is to be a reference and a starting point
for beginners. It is by no means *complete*, because it's not supposed to
be.
Have you read the manuals published by the authors of other languages
like Python, Perl or PHP? None of these languages had a perfectly concise
manual in their first few years of existence (and some still don't). In
fact, if you go to their respective websites, you'll see that the actual
language manuals lack alot of information, which in turn was picked up in
other tutorials and FAQs written by part of that language's community.
This same thing has happened in the Euphoria community - A Beginner's
Guide
to Euphoria by David Gay, probably the best Euphoria tutorial I've seen,
along with other guides by various authors.
I think Martin is right on in saying that we should pick up some of the
slack in the documentation. How can you expect Rob to do everything? RDS
is not a large company, and Euphoria is *not* a commercial level
language.
I think Chris had the right idea when he said that Euphoria is more
shareware than purely commercial. Shareware/open source/pd languages
have historically been developed and documented by their own communities.
Look at Perl - how much of the docs were written by Larry Wall? Very
few of them actually; only the original manpages were. Others like Tom
Christiansen wrote much of the later documentation and guides that we
know today.
Finally, if you're not happy with the docs, or they're not clear enough
for your liking, then hack at it. Do you expect to be spoon fed exactly
how to use peek() and poke()!? If you're as intelligent as you seem to
be, then why don't you just figure it out for yourself? Are you afraid
the computer is going to call you mean names for screwing up? ;)
[Euphoria vs Other Languages]
There has been much ado about nothing on this list when it comes to
comparing Euphoria to other languages. "Why doesn't it have this
feature?"
"Why can't we use this? Java has it" "Why aren't there structures?"
A long time ago, I was looking for "the perfect language". When I found
Euphoria (back at v1.4), I immediately fell in love with it. Its
simplicity
and lack of strong typing drew me to it like a magnet. From the first
time
I read the manual, I knew that Rob had created it with something
different
in mind than other languages had.
I believe that most of you on this list were attracted by many of the
same ideals: simplicity, easy to learn, easy to code, fast, and powerful.
Euphoria is *different*. Why would you want to make it like these other
languages that all of you profess to dislike so much?
In response to the complaints about it not having all these features, and
the livelihood of the language resting on the backs of the users'
contributions, my response is: so what?
When designing a language, there are tradeoffs between speed and
features.
If you want speed, you have to lose some features. Euphoria has always
been fast - there's no argument about that. And when it comes to
features,
if there weren't enough, all of these incredible libraries we've been
blessed with wouldn't exist. In trying to keep the speed up, Rob has
made a decision to keep the interpreter slim and trim, and he's done
a wonderful job of it.
Whether Rob originally intended for the language's advancement to rely
on users' contributions, I don't know, but I don't think it's important.
The fact is, we are all on this list and coding in Euphoria because
we **like doing it**. If we didn't, we wouldn't be here.
And because we like Euphoria, we want to contribute to its success,
and help others to do the same. It's the spirit of community that
exists here that drive us on to do it, not because Rob is making us :)
Note the kind of software that Euphoria is: SHAREWARE.
Everett, I think your problem is that you just want to get, get, get,
and not give. Have you sent any code fragments to help another guy
on the list out when he needed help? Have you contributed to the
archives, so others can use your work and learn from it? Not that
I've seen. In fact, if you look through the archives looking for
anything written by "Everett Williams", you'll come up with nothing.
You complain about Euphoria not having enough features, and this
and that, but have you contributed to *add* those features? Nope.
It seems to me that you needn't bother building it in to the language
and bog it down if it's doable in library form. If it's done that way,
then the work of debugging it is handed off to community members, and
not focused on Rob.
On that note, I want to give a huge BRAVO! to David Cuny, Pete Eberlein,
Irv Mullins, and all the other distinguished members of this list that
have given much of their time, energy, and knowledge in their
contributions
to the Euphoria community.
There's alot more I can say on this topic, but I think that's enough
brainfood for now ;)
[Offtopic Posts and Flames]
I've been reading this list in digest form for a few years now, and it
has happened that the level of aggressiveness on this list has grown
tremendously.
If I look back through digests from a year ago, there was only positive
encouragement, helpfulness, and a feeling of excitement over where the
language is headed. No one seemed to be concerned about what Euphoria
was missing - we were excited about what it had that was different from
other languages. People were developing very cool applications and
tossing code left and right.
Now that the base set of libraries has been solidified, and thousands
of lines of user code have been archived, people seem to be more
concerned with what Euphoria is missing. "It's missing this feature"
"The docs are lousy" "Where's my GUI IDE!" But the sad thing is,
people are no longer willing to develop these things themselves.
It is possible my friends - we could write some of these things
ourselves, and we have in the past. Look at VEL, and Win32Lib,
and WinsockLib, and ExoticaX, and MightMouse, and the many Font
libraries. Remeber when we all complained to Rob about how he
needs to "build those in"? It ended up he didn't need to after
all :)
It just ends up that we need to be more helpful, and be happy
with what we have, not what we're missing.
Flaming has been a huge problem lately. Certain people (no names)
have made the list a very unenjoyable place to be. You say that
the masses have not accepted Euphoria because of its lack of
support for <item>, but it has to start on this list, and your
attitudes are driving them away.
The bottom line is: please keep things ON TOPIC.
If things get worse, I agree that we should get a moderator. And
my sympathy for whoever that turns out to be :)
Thus ends my rantings for today.
----->Buddy
budmeister1 at juno.com
http://tenbux.iwarp.com/
PS: As mentioned before, I'm in digest mode, so please direct any
replies/flames/thank yous to me privately, and not to the list.
Also, thanx to Lucius Hilley for the CSV help :)
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