[Gambas-user] OFF: Perl 6 Design Philosophy

[Benoit Minisini]

Le Mercredi 16 Juillet 2003 07:59, Nelson Ferraz a écrit :
> Rob,
>
> First of all, thanks for your insightful comments!
>
> > I don't completely agree.  The article you cited was about differences
> > from one release of a language to the next incremental version of that
> > language. Let's call it equivalent of going from Gambas 0.65 (say) to
> > Gambas 1.x.
>
> I hope the transition to Gambas 1.x won't be as dramatic! :)
>
> > Gambas is going to be different than other BASICs.  There's no way around
> > it. The only popular BASICs with object extensions are pretty much VB and
> > RealBasic for the Mac which has translation issues similar to those of
> > Gambas.
>
> I Agree. The best thing to do here is to learn with succesful OO
> languages, and I think Benoit is already doing that.
>
> > - BASIC's original purpose was to enable novice programmers to write
> > useful programs while simultaneously learning something about
> > programming.  I would say Gambas probably exceeds most BASICs in this
> > department thanks to its largely clean syntax and (despite us recovering
> > VB users' influence) consistent, well-designed object model.
>
> If the goal is to enable novice programmers, perhaps we should take a
> look at Python.
>
> Guido Van Rossum says that Python was influenced by a language called
> ABC. "ABC's design had a very clear, sharp focus. ABC was intended to be
> a programming language that could be taught to intelligent computer
> users who were not computer programmers or software developers in any
> sense."
>
> He also says: "I think my most innovative contribution to Python's
> success was making it easy to extend. That also came out of my
> frustration with ABC. ABC was a very monolithic design. There was a
> language design team, and they were God. They designed every language
> detail and there was no way to add to it. You could write your own
> programs, but you couldn't easily add low-level stuff."
>
> http://www.artima.com/intv/python.html
>
> Perl 6 will be more flexible:
>
> "The plan for Perl 6 explicitly includes plans for future language
> changes. No one believes that Perl 6.0.0 will be perfect, but at the
> same time, no one wants another change process quite as dramatic as Perl
> 6. So Perl 6 will be flexible and adaptable enough to allow gradual
> shifts over time. This has influenced a number of design decisions,
> including making it easy to modify how the language is parsed, lowering
> the distinctions between core operations and user-defined operations,
> and making it easy to define new operators."
>
> And "Gambas has a component architecture that allows to extend the
> language. Anyone can write components as shared libraries that
> dynamically add new native classes to the interpreter." (Benoit)
>
> > - I have only a sample size of two here (myself and one client) but we
> > both find Gambas very familiar and comfortable in almost all respects.
>
> "Almost"? :)
>
> > - I do think I'll be able to at least get a VB form to Gambas form/class
> > translator working,
>
> Great! A tool like this will be fundamental to attract VB developers.
>
> > Generally speaking, I'll be more in favor of things that make Gambas more
> > like BASIC,
>
> "The Principle of Familiarity".
>
> > and also things that make Gambas easier to use, especially for novices
> > and people coming from other environments, and against things that make
> > Gambas non-intuitive
>
> "The Principle of DWIM", or "Do What I Mean"! :)
>
> > I don't want to see Gambas become perl
>
> Neither do I! (But remember "The Principle of Borrowing"...)
>
> > Ultimately, though, unlike Perl, I think we're close enough to the
> > genesis of the project that Gambas can be whatever Benoit would like it
> > to be.  Larry drove Perl's development through several major releases and
> > is still arguably the dominant voice in its current development, for
> > better or for worse.  But he shaped perl's original form, and Benoit is
> > now doing the same with Gambas. As far as I can see, he hasn't really
> > missed any steps.
>
> I completelly agree!
>
> []s
>
> Nelson
>

And I must tell you that I have two secret projects for gambas, two "killer" 
features, maybe for the 2.0 version.

-- 
Benoit Minisini
mailto:gambas at ...1...