On 1/18/00 12:02 AM, Steven D'Aprano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Richard Gaskin wrote:
>
>> With MC's UI taking a backseat to its feature set (the UI
>> favors the only platform that doesn't like to pay for
>> software <g>), the development environment has had difficulty
>> garnering the market share the interpreter richly deserves.
>
>Its been my experience that 4GLs and development environments like
>Hypercard, Metacard, etc don't get any respect from programmers because
>they are too easy to use.
>
>Many programmers are highly intelligent, and eat up complex languages
>like C and perl for breakfast. Put them in front of something as easy to
>use as Metacard and they won't even notice the feature set because they
>can't see past how easy to use it is.
>
>Intelligent they might be, but it seems to me they can't break past
>their first impression (or is that bias?) that powerful languages have
>to have hairy syntax and that simple languages are only for simple
>applications. In other words, Metacard isn't a "real" programming tool.
>
>Naturally I don't share that bias :-)
I agree--does that mean we're not highly intelligent? :-)
>
>Perhaps what Scott needs to do is add a "just in time" compiler to the
>system. This compiler can then use the "professional" version of
>Metascript, with all variables accessed via pointers, zero-based arrays,
>binary data, and a syntax that combines the readability of perl with the
>ease of use of C. Programmers will flock to use it!
>
AppleScript (a built-in scripting language on the Mac) is somewhat
similar to HyperTalk, etc., in using an english dialect. It also offers a
few other dialects, including (I believe) French and one other language,
and even incorporates the different grammars. The interesting thing is
that all dialects of AppleScript compile to the same underlying
meta-code, and are translated back into the source for editing. I've read
that you can even take a compiled AppleScript that was written in English
and decompile it into French, and vice versa.
In any case, there's a story told about AppleScript, that in order to
gain respectability, the programmers wrote a "C" dialect for AppleScript,
that would make "real" programmers feel at home. :-) I don't know if it's
true, but it makes for a good story.
gc
Geoff Canyon
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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