[chuck-users] Playing with fire

[Kassen]

David;


Hang on. I imagine that it's very friendly to someone who is not a
> working programmer :)


Yeah, I can see that. :-)


>  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?
>

Well, you can define a length zero array, then do lots of generative stuff
while growing it by appending to it. Sadly that is not in the manual, you
are right about that. It's just in the VERSIONS file and the examples
directory.


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

Absolutely, that's because it is. :-)


>
> Will do. And thanks for the tip.
>

Cool! :-)

Well the second most obvious one is having to list all the files
> needed on the command line :)


Well, files can call files but I think you mean dependencies. we need those,
Ge mentioned plans for those, I'm not sure how far along those are.


> 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.
>

Yup, the whole class thing is basically a place-holder to get by until a
more serious system is in place. We also need a more convenient way of
having global objects.


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

That's quite interesting. I'd like to know how that works. I also think it
would be useful to outline how you would like things to be. We have a
shortage of development time here but I think one of the most important
things we also need is ideas on extending everything in a way that stays
coherent. I see a big role for that on the list.

Those aren't wholy my ideas, BTW, that's just a re-phrasing of the
invitations scattered through the docs.


> 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.
>

Oh, yes,some bits are infuriating.... The workarounds for public objects,
the issues around the edges of the type system, etc. I agree. These are
known issues, I don't think anyone likes them.


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

If you are planning serious work on some part it might be good to
communicate on the dev-list to avoid clashing fixes. Some people might
already be working on aspects of arrays as there has been a series of bugs
involving arrays loosing track of object types, for example.



>
> > 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++.
>

Ah, ok, I didn't know. I thought you might have a allergy to curly braces,
like some people seem to have. I'm sorry, it's hard to address relative
strangers on these matters when you don't know their background.

I noticed that despie your competence you still didn't refer to "fun" ;-)


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

Yay!

Yours,
kas.
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