Re: Euphoria's Future
> Anyway it's late and I'll probably read this tomorrow and think what a load of
> >crap was I going on about last
night!!! ( buy maybe not )
Hi, Ray,
NO! It's not 'a load of crap' at all! It's a well thought out and extremely
thought-provoking commentary, as was your
previous posting re: Features we would like to see (and perhaps pay for).
I fully agree that people who've done such wonderful work in providing add-ons
to Euphoria should be compensated for the
value they have given us.
Would I be willing to pay for a good IDE? You Bet! (Hey, Judith!). Would I have
been willing to pay for Win32Lib.e? You
Bet!!! How about W32LibTutor, or ABGTE2, or EDS?? Would I have been willing to
pay for them? And How!!. Ditto, for all
of the many lib's I've used from so many contributors.
I think it would be best to pay the individual authors directly, so that I could
just buy what I need. How would those
authors let me know what they've got for sale? Well, perhaps that's where Rob
would come in. Perhaps he could allow
advertisements on the RDS web site. (Ultimately, such add-ons must benefit RDS,
too.)
Better yet, though, they could just tell us about the products on the mailing
list.
Anyway, Ray, thanks for your good thoughts. I'll be filling out the "Features"
form shortly, as soon as I've finished
thinking about it.
Regards,
Jim
------Original Message------
From: Ray & Debbie Smith <smithr at IX.NET.AU>
To: EUPHORIA at LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Sent: January 11, 2001 12:57:58 PM GMT
Subject: Re: Euphoria's Future
<snip>
For all the power of Euphoria, at the moment it is still a toy ... at least in
Windows. For all the hard work of many
people who have contributed libraries and code, it still impossible to write
full blown commercial quality windows apps.
I don't mean that with any disrespect but the fact that Euphoria doesn't come
with a Windows IDE and no Windows GUI
tools and no way to access data outside of Euphoria (except the MySQL wrapper??)
... means it by itself is useless for
windows programming. In time these holes will be filled by user libraries but
until then all we can do is help with the
guys (and
gals!) doing all the work (or look at writing alternatives). If (and maybe
when) these projects are completed it would
seem reasonable for their authors to receive some kind of financial benefit,
especially considering it will financially
reward
RDS in time. Anyone who has been involved with any kind of software development
will understand the amazing amount of
effort required to produce good quality products.
I should say the Micro economy is RDS's approach of rewarding user contributions
..
and for the smaller projects I think it has its merit ... but for larger
projects I think something else is required.
I imagine most people who are able to write the quality of
software required would be registered anyway.
I don't think it is unreasonable to think if someone wrote a
good quality IDE or GUI toolkit that Rob shouldn't offer them
money for it and add it to the base distribution.
I think a more achievable aim might be for Rob to offer that
product (eg an IDE) for sale using his resources as a seperate
product or as an add-on product. Then the author just shares
a percentage of the sales with RDS and RDS doesn't need to
fork out any up front capital. Again with maybe a cut down
version available for free. This way the current small size and
inexpsenive Euphoria can remain with optional add on products.
It obviously depends on two things ... if Rob is interested and
if anyone out their has the time, effort, resources and knowledge
to complete such projects.
I trully beleive this idea or some variation of it should be considered by Rob.
I think the one man show that is
Euphoria has shown and will continue to show that it can't deliver the
functionality required to be a general purpose
programming environment (especially in Windows).
You can compare Euphoria to Visual Basic to Delphi to C++ ... whatever language
you want ... their just aren't the tools
available to produce good quality Windows software. What Euphoria is, is like
Visual Basic or Delphi without the IDE's,
debuggers, GUI tools, and dozens of other libraries that are packaged with these
products. If you removed all that from
Visual Basic it would be small fast and "almost" as sexy!
I guess all my rambling comes down to the fact that Rob should consider some
ways of increasing the coders developing
Euphoria. I think power users writing some good quaility libraries would be a
good start.
As an example if Rob said to me, I'll give you X dollars or Y% of sales for
writing a quaility ODBC interface I'd
seriously consider it. Even though I know nothing of it, I might buy a book,
read MSDN or something but it would be a
major challange with a possibly a nice reward.
I might say ... give me a few weeks to investigate the possiblity and I'll get
back to you. I would write a small
prototype as proof of concept and then discuss further with RDS.
( Don't ask me Rob as ODBC doesn't interest me that much!!! :) )
I guess that also brings me back to that list of features survey I mentioned, if
100 people said they would pay $15 for
an IDE I'm sure a few people would consider putting some more effort in!
I'm also sure not everyone who said they would pay would actually buy it, and
the amount of effort required to complete
such a project wouln't mean you'd quit your day job ... but it would still be an
incentive.
Anyway it's late and I'll probably read this tomorrow and think what a load of
crap was I going on about last night!!! (
buy maybe not )
Ray Smith
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