Re: What we really need...
- Posted by "Carl W." <euphoria at cyreksoft.yorks.com> Nov 12, 2002
- 477 views
Irv wrote: > Do we need a 'killer app' to make Euphoria more popular? > I say no. Depends what you mean by killer app. Would that be a standalone super-product or something that allows you to build one a standalone super-product better and faster than using the base language? > No, because most people do not know or care what language their > applications are written in. Would you stop using your favorite and most > productive app just because you discovered that it had been written in > VisualWhooPas-2.0? > > Didn't think so. I sometimes make an exception to this if the app seems buggy then I find it was written in VB. ;) > What DO we need? A good swift kick? ... Just kidding. > [...] RDS has done a good job of emphasizing Euphoria's strong points: > speed and simplicity, but speed and simplicity apparently aren't enough. > Euphoria is smaller and faster [...] Yet perl, python, java and ruby > each have 10, 100, 1000 times as many users as Euphoria. Why? To return to the point I was trying to make at the beginning; I can't think of many killer apps in any of the languages you mention. The thing that makes each of them popular is one thing: code base... Perl has arguably the largest online repository of user code on the planet. And the built-in text-processing capabilities are astounding. Sun wrote a virtual infinitude of classes for Java - there's so much available there that it seems you shouldn't need to write any original code in that language if you can just find the right libraries. Python, like Perl, has so much stuff built into the main language from the outset that people gravitate, convinced their job would be easier. Ruby I don't know too much about, but from what I've seen, they started out from a small band of fanatics who raved about it everywhere they went online. Sort of a Ruby missionary project. What do I suggest we do? We could adopt all strategies - write top notch libraries, then go forth and spread the word of the mighty Object Sequence advertising our libraries along the way. Convert people from the Heathen Otherlanguages! This ain't just Snake Oil! Ahem. Or we could be a bit more subtle. Either way, if we want Euphoria to be big (and we should be careful what we wish for here) we can't sit around like we are doing. We need to motivate. Carl - All hail the Object Sequence. :)