Re: Is Euphoria's beauty enduring or fleeting?
Gordon Webster wrote:
> 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.
I think an important point also is this: Concerning natural languages,
linguists say that we only can think what our language allows us to
think. I would not actually be surprised if this also would be true for
programming languages.
> 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!"
LOL! Wasn't it in the movie 'Sister Act II', where one of the nuns said:
"All we need in life is some duct tape and trust in God."?
> 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.
Yes, it's a pity.
> I would hate to see Euphoria, a superb tool for crafting computer programs,
> follow the same path through rigidity or a reluctance to evolve.
Well spoken!
> Thanks for bearing with me.
>
> We now return to your normally scheduled programming ...
>
>
> Gordon
Regards,
Juergen
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