Dear Sheri,

I think the basic documentation "ChucK_manual.pdf" that one gets when you download chuck is actually rather good, for me, the clarity of that manual is what actually got me hooked many years ago.

My 2 cents regarding the future of ChucK: I still run it every day. For playing around with experimental DSP that includes compositional ideas, I think it is still really cool (I've tried Faust, but find it a bit to focused on DSP). I also know ChucK was used at Sonology institute in The Hague for teaching (some of the) DSP classes. 

I have to say that I am running into its limitations (especially that code can get very verbose, because of its similarity to Java). I noticed some of my live-coded programs got unreadable/uneditable because of it. I especially miss functional programming syntax, which is why I now use a translation script written in Python: https://github.com/casperschipper/cisp, which takes a scheme like syntax and translates it into chuck. Since the syntax of that is very different from chuck, I could imagine it someday 'compiles' to another (more efficient) language, but for now, ChucK is ok.

Regarding performance, I sometimes schedule supercollider events through OSC with chuck, this gives me the nice strong-timing syntax of chuck and the efficiency of supercollider server, but I guess for beginners this is a bit messy construction.

Best,
Casper



On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 10:42 AM, Sheri W-J <Sheri@wells-jensen.net> wrote:
Hello, Folks, 
Can someone tell me where to find the YouAreReasonablySmartButHavingTroubleGettingStarted documentation? I'm having trouble getting past the initial steps: I've done some Perl programming but I could use maybe ... I guess if I knew exactly what I needed, then I wouldn't need it! 
Is the book I see advertised on the Check homepage my answer? If it is, is that book available electronically anywhere? I'm blind, so purchasing a hard copy would mean running it through OCR which would introduce pesky errors. 
Thanks for any tips. 
Best, 
Sheri 



On Jan 14, 2018, at 1:12 PM, Stuart Roland <stuartroland@gmail.com> wrote:

I can't speak to the future of ChucK itself, but recently I have been giving a lot of thought to MY future with Chuck. First off, I love ChucK and all the cool stuff it let's me create. I find it much more intuitive than any other audio programming language/environment I have used and I can usually create something along the lines of what I set out to create with it. My problem with it is that I really want to be able to create stand alone apps and plugins with it, which I have not found any way of doing. I would like for my software to be usable by the average musician, not just by programmer-musicians who can read ChucK code (though we are a cool bunch). I know ChucK Racks were just released (for Macs,which I don't use) but as I understand, this just let's you run ChucK scripts as a plugin, and does not provide a way to wrap up the code in any UI to distribute to musicians who are used to sliders, knobs, presets etc.

So I guess I have a few questions for everyone/anyone here: is there a way to use ChucK in a mobile or desktop app? Is there a way to connect ChucK to a GUI that is simple enough that non-programmers could use it? If not, is there another language / libraries for another language like python, for example, that has some of the great, intuitive design as ChucK? Is ChucK more of an educational tool at this point and less of a tool for developers?

Thanks for taking the time to read. Happy audio/music making!

Stuart

On Jan 14, 2018 11:00 AM, <chuck-users-request@lists.cs.princeton.edu> wrote:
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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: static strings and the future (JP Yepez)


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: JP Yepez <jpyepezimc@gmail.com>
To: ChucK Users Mailing List <chuck-users@lists.cs.princeton.edu>
Cc: 
Bcc: 
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 15:53:30 +1300
Subject: Re: [chuck-users] static strings and the future
Hello all,

I can't say much about the development part itself, but in my experience I've noticed that ChucK is still being used widely at an academic level. I understand it's being used in a few universities that include creative technology programs and computer orchestra courses in their curriculums, including CalArts, Stanford, and VUW (New Zealand). Like Mario mentioned, it is a core part of a few Kadenze courses; I've been involved as a producer/teaching assistant in a couple of them and it seems like it's a popular language among students who are just learning how to code, and musicians who would like to develop more advanced projects. Also, ChucK Racks popped up a couple of months ago, which was pretty exciting. So yeah, I think there's quite a bit going on, but it certainly would be nice to have a more active community (I'm hoping to contribute, and hopefully I'll get to it before too long).

About the static strings issue, I think they're kind of in a shady spot. Like Gonzalo mentioned, you can't have static non-primitives in your code, but there is a workaround to this by declaring objects as a reference and then initializing them outside of the class. However, if you try to do this with strings, it will tell you that they're a primitive type and it throws an error. The best hack I've found for this is through arrays (even if the size of the array is 1 in many cases). Here's an example:


public class Container {


    static string staticString[];

    

    public static void init() {

        new string[1] @=> staticString;

        "Hello World" @=> staticString[0];

    }

    

    public static void print(){

        <<< staticString[0] >>>;

    }

}


Container.init();

Container.print();



You don't really need an init() function, and you can initialize the array on the actual script, but I usually end up with much larger classes, which is why I like to keep things clean.
Hope this helps!

Best,

JP


JP Yepez
New Media Artist - Musician - Researcher
Email:      jpyepezimc@gmail.com
--------------------------------------------------------



On Sun, Jan 14, 2018 at 12:19 AM, mario buoninfante <mario.buoninfante@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,

I'd like to ask the same question about the development status.

the only thing I can say is that also if the development seems to be a bit stuck, on the other side I noticed that they're pushing on the educational side (see Kadenze courses), and if you look at the github repository, there's been some update in the last 2 years.

but as you guys said, it's important to know what's the plan ;)

it's a couple of years I'm really diving into ChucK and I strongly believe that is a good programming language which opens up a lot of possibilities that other languages don't.

but at the same time I feel like it's been a bit abandoned (maybe that's a huge word, let's say put aside ;) ) and of course using a "tool"  which has an "uncertain future" it's not the best thing.

I wish I was able to offer my contribution to the development, but unfortunately I'm not really into C/C++, I'm more a "scripting language guy" :)

btw, it would be nice to hear what developers and/or other users have to say about it.


cheers,

Mario



On 12/01/18 22:14, Gonzalo wrote:
Yes, I'm wondering the same thing. There's a Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1593843507578422/) but it doesn't look super active either.

As far as static strings: I'm pretty sure you just can't have static non-primitives. What are you trying to achieve?

Cheers,
Gonzalo


On 13.01.18 00:20, Atte wrote:
Hi

I've been away for a long time and surprised that activity seems to have slowed down a lot, both on the development of new releases chuck and the life of this list. Am I looking at the wrong places? What's the status of chuck development now and in the future?

I really like chuck (mostly the timing and sporking including Machine.add()), should I look other places for a language that will privide a more secure future? I'm on linux and looked at Csound, Super Collider and PD, each has it's challenges in how I work (realtime generative and algorithmic MIDI), python seems to have realtime problems (garbage collection at random points). Any idea what former chuck users have switched to now?

Back to chuck! A problem that I never been able to solve, static strings:

public class A {
     "b" @=> static string B;

     public static void C(){
    <<<B>>>;
     }
}

That throws an error, how would I go about what I'm trying to do?

Cheers



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