[chuck-users] Playing with fire

[David Rush]

2009/8/22 Kassen <signal.automatique at gmail.com>:
>> Well, as a long-time Schemer (and very occasional ChucK recreator), I
>> find ChucK to be a very unfriendly programming environment.
>
> Really? Well, it's supposed to be friendly and welcoming so something is
> wrong there.

Hang on. I imagine that it's very friendly to someone who is not a
working programmer :)  And I will also stipulate that some of my
problem may be with the documentation, but seriously how can a
language where I can't allocate an array who size is only known at
run-time be called friendly?

Having said that, I do rather like ChucK. It just feels about half-finished.

> My tips would be;
> *Download and read Ge's doctoral thesis. More so than the manual it explains
> the underlying concepts and reasoning, the "why  of ChucK", if you wish.
> IMHO this is a undervalued document for understanding ChucK;
> http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~ge/thesis.html

Will do. And thanks for the tip.

> *List what you feel is wrong on the list for debate and potential fixes or
> perhaps explanations on why these things might make sense after all; I don't
> know and I can't help if you don't explain what issues you have.

Well the second most obvious one is having to list all the files
needed on the command line :) Strict file scope for variables, but not
for classes is another annoyance. No object constructors feels
dangerous, especially in light of a deeply inherited class hierarchy.

All of which are not really show-stoppers. But the array thing has me
generating code in Scheme to run under ChucK.

> *Have a look at Supercollider, some people who feel ChucK is unfriendly feel

Interesting. And thanks for the tip.

> Of course it should also be said that ChucK uses some odd/new ideas that may
> only properly sink in after having used them for a while; I'm not sure how
> much ChucK you already wrote.

I actually find most of ChucK's innovations (the timing constructs and
shreds) to be fairly nice. It's the stuff around the edges which makes
me nuts.

> license comes with it. Click here; http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/release/

Brill!

> dislike ChucK and come from a Scheme background C++ may not be your idea of
> fun. I'm not sure anybody thinks C++ is great fun.

I don;t. But I've been getting paid for it for 20+ years (ick! ick!
ick!). I feel competent to deal with nearly anything in C++.

I'm not planning to chuck out the baby just yet :)

david
-- 
GPG Public key at http://cyber-rush.org/drr/gpg-public-key.txt