compileIt for revolution?

[Jerry Daniels]

Dan,

I thought Tom Pittman did a very good job of maintaining the purity of 
HyperTalk when he did CompileIt! Any future efforts could stand on his 
shoulders in that regard.

-JD

On Jun 23, 2005, at 7:26 PM, Dan Shafer wrote:

> If you can write externals in Transcript syntax and NOT over-extend 
> the language to accommodate this demand, I don't have an issue. But 
> that is not generally the case. When people talk about writing 
> externals they generally (in my experience at least) mean they want to 
> make the tool do something its built-in language does not inherently 
> know how to do. There is in that desire a strong implication of adding 
> features to the language that I believe will ultimately corrupt it to 
> the point of not being accessible to mere mortals.
>
> It's what I call the Javazation of Transcript. If you have a need for 
> something in a program that Transcript simply can't do and if the 
> right way to solve that problem is with an external, then it seems to 
> me you should be willing to move outside the boundaries of the 
> language to do that thing, whatever it is. (These multi-dimensional 
> array manipulations, e.g., can apparently not be done satisfactorily 
> in Transcript.)
>
> I'm *always* going to come down on the side of keeping the language as 
> simple as possible. In my opinion, it is already too burdened with 
> baggage that is of use to a tiny fraction of its users in order to 
> accommodate a few people with specific programming needs. As it 
> becomes more complex -- even if those complexities are posited as 
> "optional alternatives" -- it becomes more and more impenetrable to 
> those who do not have a computer science background or formal computer 
> training. Those folks already have enough languages to pick from. I 
> strongly desire for this one to escape the clutches of the Programming 
> Priesthood.
>
> On Jun 23, 2005, at 6:35 AM, Rob Cozens wrote:
>
>> Why would any Transcript scriptor want to write externals in C or 
>> Pascal if she could use Transcript syntax instead?
>>
>
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Dan Shafer, Revolution Consultant and Author
> http://www.shafermedia.com
> Get my book, "Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought"
> From http://www.shafermedia.com/revolutionbooks.html
>
>
>
>
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