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My impressions

PostPosted: Wed Mar 24, 2010 4:10 pm
by biribau
Hi, im new to Cobra :D
I was simply tired of "conventional" languages, i hate that sort of shity languages like c, c++, vb, java and derivates. I dont like also python because it gives me a lot of headaches(non control over symbols defined at compile time?? i cant believe it hehe). I like languages like Haskell, Prolog, Mercury, Smalltalk, Objective-C, even Pascal(though its a bit old-fashioned). I want languages which help to the programmer in his non trivial task.
Lately im trying new langs, and i found Cobra. Congrats, it looks promising.
I'm doing an small personal project of a programmers game in the style of the classic Corewar(but very different, and not robot-role based ;)
My idea it's to implement it in some languages of my interest, like Cobra, Boo, Mercury, Haskell, Objective C, Nimrod, Lisaac, Dylan, and maybe CLISP, Self and Io

From my point of view the main Cobra weak point is the documentation, few and scattered. It's difficult to find where is the exact point for that especial syntax or feature. And its not very complete, i encourage you to prioritize this, as Meyer said "Incorrect documentation is better than no documentation"[Nimrod site]. This is very important to attract new users, even "very interested users"(like me) gets frustated sometimes because of this.

Congrats again, and thanks, for this project ;)

Re: My impressions

PostPosted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 2:48 am
by Charles
Thanks for your interest and feedback. It's not clear from your message where you are looking for documentation. I suggest places like:

http://cobra-language.com/docs/

http://cobra-language.com/docs/how-to-learn/

http://cobra-language.com/how-to/

http://cobra-language.com/trac/cobra/wiki

http://cobra-language.com/trac/cobra/wiki/LanguageTopics

...including the search feature on the wiki.

Finally, I ask the community to help out with docs by continuing to flesh out, correct and organize the wiki. "Hopscc" has been doing a great job in this area, but we could use more writers and editors.

As far as my efforts go, I always seem to be busy on the compiler as you can see at the Trac timeline. I'll also be cutting a release soon, but you can always use the latest source.

Re: My impressions

PostPosted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 2:53 am
by Charles
Oh, and I like forward to playing your game and/or reading the code. :-)

Re: My impressions

PostPosted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 10:13 am
by biribau
I use all those sites for documentation i only miss a more centralized and ordered "language reference"
PS: of course you will get the source of my game, i will be proud you can read it. Though it won't force players to use Cobra to play it(actually it will be language independent) :D

Re: My impressions

PostPosted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 10:28 am
by biribau
I also wanted to refer to this forum, where is a big source of documentated features. It's hard and slow to find how to do certain thing in cobra. It will be great an automatically feature documenter if something like that does exists hehe

Re: My impressions

PostPosted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 2:42 pm
by Charles
I'm concerned regarding your statement "It's hard and slow to find how to do certain thing". The "How To" section at http://cobra-language.com/how-to/ is supposed to address that. Let us know here in the forums what things you had trouble finding and maybe that can guide us on future improvements. (Also, feel free to expand the wiki as you learn.)