skaller wrote: > So I need your help! Just answering a simple question .. :) > > What needs to be done to get more people involved?
IMHO 1) Shootout entry. (http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/) It's not just about speed, it's a tool to compare language style and syntax. All "big/active player" languages are present there, and the language which isn't looks as a project which have no enough resources to survive. When choosing a new language, i've found myself constantly returning to Shootout. 2) FAQ-style / searchable documentation. I've wrote a small Felix program half a year ago (2006-09), but it required me to shovel the whole documentation at least twice, just to find the pieces i needed (and the program is only 7kb long, a lot smaller than the documentation i had to read). The existing documentation is systematic, but isn't helpful when i need to solve particular problem. Searchable documentation is a win. Since Felix documentation is automatically generated, i would highly recommend generating a CHM bundle (it is automatically searchable, fast and convenient) and adding a Google search on the site documentation. In Haskell we have practically no full documentation, instead there is the Report and a lot of tutorials (and GHC User's Guide). It might be not as convenient when developing, but it makes the language so much more attractive to the new user. Felix is much easier than Haskell (being imperative, no monads, etc) and yet it is much harder to write a small program in Felix than in Haskell. The problem is, the "http://felix.sourceforge.net/doc/tutorial/introduction/en_flx_tutorial_top.html"; is not really a tutorial. Rather it's a documentation by example. Tutorial must concentrate on something (like IO, or Felix-C++ linking, or whatever) and explain this something at large (repeating the same thing several times in different ways, if necessary) so that after reading the reader feels the area covered, feels himself confident in that area of the language. Having several tutorials written by different peoples on the same subject helps much to this effect. Both Shootout entries and tutorials is a good area for contribution, but i think there is a need for some coordination. Haskell have this "contribution development cycle": IRC->mailing lists->WiKi (know how)->Trac tickets (matured language/library improvements). There was a call for Shootout participation and a WiKi hierarchy created: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Shootout; i understand this is something to be done by contributors either, but this is a good example how things should be organized. P.S. I'm going to try using Felix from inside a Java application via JNI, and if i succeed with all the linking troubles (to which i haven't found any documentation so far), i might write a WiKi page / tutorial on that. 3) News feed (aka BLOG) with recent additions. Mailing list is for solving problems, BLOG is for keeping in touch with community. BLOG might contain essentially what Haskell "News" at "http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell"; does, that is, highlights on SOME of the mailing list threads. Google groups seems more user-friendly than sourceforge to me, though i prefer GMANE most, and i doubt it is possible to view a Google group through GMANE? If it /is/ possible, then go for google-groups. It is certaintly not user-friendly to just direct the user into http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/felix-language, as it is done currently on http://felix.sourceforge.net/, instead, there should be links both to GMANE, Google groups and whatever else there is. GMANE, IMHO, is very convenient, given the number and quality of interfaces (NNTP for subscription, WEB for cursory reading / search) and should be advertised. 4) About core language developers (the Pending Death thread). (From my profane point of view). Haskell have them because it's a research platform. And even then, it's backed by a research institure and Microsoft Research. Most other languages i know are either script "kiddy" languages and thus can attract a much larger audience (Perl, PHP, Ruby) or were industry-backed at first (Java, C++). The "kiddy" languages are given the opportunity to mature and grow a community because they are "kiddy" - the first implementation is naive, easy to implement and thus much effort is going into libraries, documentation, usability; the industry-backed languages can grow because peoples don't bother waiting for co-developers, they just sell their languages to a corporate user-base, who do applications and proprietary libraries, part of which becomes free, and one day we have a mature language. But even that doesn't guarantee there will be co-developers soon. Felix is close to "mature" part, it is important, i think, to write the specification and concentrate on stability and usability (which includes documentation, tutorials, web infrastructure, more integration/interoperability libraries/guides, OS packages). 5) Felix is in the unfortunate space between safe languages, including the "kiddy" scripting ones, complicated languages, like Haskell with GADTs, and the C++, where it is easy to "shot thyself in the foot". I think it is very important to provide a way of running Felix under a managed runtime. Modern language user expect stack traces and safety from it's language!.. C++ audience is diminishing, not growing, because pure C++ lacks that safety. Felix should took pains, *if it is possible*, to provide easy, either out-of-the-box, or supported (automatically tested) and docummented compilation of Felix into .NET managed DLL's (Visual C++ targeting CLR) and maybe LLVM bytecode. What should be implemented under such targets is save SIGSEGV exception handling and recovery, exception stack traces (not necessary method-level)... Is it possible with current Felix design? P.S. There is a stack unwinding feature in GCC, used from GCJ but available for tapping from usual C++ code. Is it applicapble to Felix? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Felix-language mailing list Felix-language@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/felix-language
