On 4 Oct 2005, at 09:24, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
This is indeed what I'm trying to point out. Javascript is underestimated all the time as a language, and having it in Max is a paradigm shift, IMHO.
Javascript is AFAIK already used to write a large part of Mozilla/FireFox, no?
It is indeed. But most people ignore Javascript as a 90's webby thingy.
And what qualifies something to be called a paradigm shift?
When that something changes the nature and process of the work people do with the framework dramatically. Before, I worked in abstractions and tried to find other people's externals that might do what I wanted; I tried to study C. Now, I enjoy myself and write ruby objects. Not big, not clever, but I'm getting more work done than I ever did in a year, in a month.
That's a paradigm shift as far as I'm concerned.
Connecting to C libraries isn't automatic, but there's a Ruby/DL tool that can help. For C++ there is SWIG, which currently can't export towards Pd, but can export towards Ruby and Python and such.
SWIG is still hard to use IMO, but it would be great to have a small SWIG/DL tutorial for Ruby/Puredata, maybe...
Pd is a lot different because its messages never have return values, which is something SWIG can't deal with. This requires reorganisations and/or workarounds. What's a float(*)(float) in C becomes an extra outlet _and_ an extra inlet in Pd, and that's only if you aren't expected to change the pointer in the meanwhile, because that'd mean you're screwed.
Yeah. Wow.
Ruby and Python have their own interesting libraries, which are not available in regular C/C++.
Quite.
Does that mean we agree that it's a good thing? ;-)
d
-- # David Plans Casal
problem.each { |day| assert_nil(spoon) }