OpenEuphoria

Re: Fair Criticism

• Posted by rforno at tutopia.com Aug 12, 2001
• 521 views

I agree with Derek.
Regards.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Derek Parnell" <ddparnell at bigpond.com>
To: "EUforum" <EUforum at topica.com>
Subject: Re: Fair Criticism


>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <gertie at ad-tek.net>
> To: "EUforum" <EUforum at topica.com>
> Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2001 6:17 PM
> Subject: Re: Fair Criticism
>
>
> >
> > On 10 Aug 2001, at 18:17, Robert Craig wrote:
> >
> > > >
> > > > I'd never even heard of it before, and I'm a language slut.  This
> > > > suggests to me that the user community is very small, and when the
> > > > author gets tired of it the language will die.
> > >
> > > The user community has been growing steadily for years.
> > > This mailing list has gone from 250 to 360 in the past 6 months.
> > > I started designing Euphoria 12 years ago, and I'm working on it
> > > full-time. The source will soon be (mostly) available.
> > >
> > > > It's commercial and proprietary (it's cheap, but it still costs),
> > > > which IMO are acceptable for applications but extraordinarily bad
> ideas
> > > > for basic infrastructure like a programming language.
> > >
> > > Microsoft seems to be doing pretty well peddling C++, Visual Basic,
> > > various operating systems, and other "basic infrastructure".
> > >
> > > If a programmer can improve his productivity by 10%,
> > > why on earth would he not spend $39, or even $3900 in doing so?
> >
> > Well, for some people who make $39 a month, $3900 would seem like a lot
of
> money,
> > it sure seems like a lot to me.
> >
> > > > It's not object-oriented, and doesn't even have structs.  This is
> > > > the real show-stopper.  Without this capability, it's going to be a
> > > > nightmare to write code using complex data structures.
> > >
> > > My worst nightmares by far have occurred while programming
> > > complex, dynamic, flexible data structures in C/C++, mallocing and
> > > freeing every step of the way with tremendous opportunities
> > > for hideous bugs. In Euphoria it's a breeze.
> >
> > I *much* prefer the Eu way of free-form structures. This leaves it up to
> me what i want
> > to put in "fields". In Pascal, i used a lot of variant fields, and was
> constrained by the
> > rule of only one variant and it had to be at the end of a pre-declared
> fixed record. What
> > would make arrays/records as complex as C++ or pascal, but far more
> versatile, will
> > be if/when Rob (or someone) adds the runtime var naming, like mirc.
> >
>
> What's this Either/Or mentality about. Irv and myself are not talking
about
> having either structures or sequences, but having both instead. Sequences
> are brilliant! They solve many programming issues and the only real reason
> to stick with Euphoria. Structures also can solve real programming
issues -
> a DIFFERENT set of issues. No one is saying that we must use structures
> instead of sequences. No one is trying to change the way you code
Euphoria,
> Kat. We are asking for choice though. If I only have a hammer, every
problem
> starts to look like a nail.
>
> As we all know, sequences can be used to emulate structures but this is
> different to implementing structures. Are sequences the best way to have
> fixed-size objects, with named references to elements and have those names
> scoped to the type of object?
>
> With 2.3 nearing readiness, we should probably put this issue away until
we
> have absorbed the 2.3 impact to our programs. But I will be lobbying for
> structures in future.
>
> ---------
> Cheers
> Derek.
>
>
>
>
>