Is Euphoria's beauty enduring or fleeting?
I agree with the point that Jason made about Euphoria code being beautiful.
I rediscovered some of my Euphoria code in a dusty directory after more than
a year and I was amazed at how clean, clear and legible it was. Even at first
glance, I could pretty much read it as if it were a text specification for
the code rather than code itself. Try doing that with C or C++!
I dabbled briefly with PowerBasic, but the syntax was so damn ugly I derived
no satisfaction from coding in it and my code was hard to read even after a
week, let alone a year. I don't know how PureBasic is by comparison, but I
have yet to see any dialect of Basic that comes close to Euphoria's elegance.
I am an avid photographer and would like to make an analogy here that may
find a resonance with some of this forum's readers - with apologies in
advance to those who have no idea what the hell I'm talking about ...
There are many cameras that take excellent pictures but certain cameras are
just more satisfying to use and as a photographer, I take better pictures
with those cameras not because they are "better" with regard to their ability
to collect light and focus it on a light-sensitive surface or even because
they offer more features. I take better pictures with those cameras because
of the effect that they have on me as the photographer. It's not even easy
to put your finger on why this is. It could be as simple as the way the
camera feels in my hands - but it's a real effect whose results are clearly
visible in my pictures.
I have noticed that my feelings about programming languages follow a very
similar pattern. I do write better code in Euphoria than I do in C because
there's a certain feeling of satisfaction that I get when "crafting" a
function in Euphoria. C's pointers, redirection and "suck it and see"
bounds checking make me feel like Mr. Scott who just patched up the
Enterprise's warp drive with duct tape and string - "she could get us
home Cap'n, but I can nae guarantee it!"
I'm not promoting or defending any method or ideology here and those who
have a coding deadline to meet for an important client who needed their new
Java web server yesterday, will probably dismiss all this as sentimental
twaddle that has little relevance to the "real world" of software
development, and that's fine. Horses for courses etc. This is just my $0.02.
On a cautionary note however and returning (for the last time I promise) to
my photography analogy. The Leica camera company had for decades made the
kind of excellent cameras I referred to - superb instruments with a kind of
mythical resonance that just demanded more of any photographer who held them
in their hands. So fixed were Leica however to their "tradition" that they
either failed to see that the world of photography was changing around them
or failed to see how their tradition of excellence and unrelenting pursuit
of perfection might be reinterpreted anew in the context of digital image
capture - the technology that was transforming photography.
When they finally did, it was too little, too late and Leica are now in
virtual receivership because the photography world embraced the new
technology and embraced the companies who could provide it.
I would hate to see Euphoria, a superb tool for crafting computer programs,
follow the same path through rigidity or a reluctance to evolve.
Thanks for bearing with me.
We now return to your normally scheduled programming ...
Gordon
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