RE: Project Status???

If there is a way to implement Gary's idea for syntactic sugar, I am all
for it.

The main benefit of scripting languages in my opinion is providing a
higher level of expression.  To do this you have to consider the target
audience for the language.  In my case that is engineers.  I include
BeanShell in a program used by engineers.  BeanShell gives them the
ability to create their own scripts using high level Java classes that
our group provides.  A little syntactic sugar would go a long way toward
making it more user friendly for this audience (i.e. Operator
Overloading).  

Let's say I have a class that represents a 6 component force&moment at a
position (Fx,Fy,Fz,Mx,My,Mz,...).  

Engineers understand the syntax:

ftotal = f1+f2;

But the syntax below is completely foreign to them:

ftotal = f1.plus(f2);

Or worse (but more efficient for code geeks),

ftotal = new Force();
ftotal.plusEquals(f1);
ftotal.plusEquals(f2);

I know operator overloading can be wasteful, but the whole purpose of
scripting is usability, not efficiency.

4GL tools like Matlab are successful because their syntax is targeted
toward a certain domain and user group.  With some ability to customize
syntax, there is no reason BeanShell could not be turned into a poor
man's (person's) Matlab, or any other tool.  I like BeanShell because it
is compact and rock solid.  I like Groovy because of it's rich syntax.
However, where BeanShell lacks syntactic sugar, Groovy lacks maturity.
I really hope one of these languages comes through.  Java needs them.

Scott...



-----Original Message-----
From: Furash Gary [mailto:furashg-sZWokWQQVgMxjvOLE2GS1/[email protected]] 
Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2005 11:41 AM
To: [email protected]
Cc: beanshell-developers-5NWGOfrQmneRv+LV9MX5uipxlwaOVQ5f@public.gmane.org
Subject: RE: [Beanshell-dev] Project Status???

It's still floating around in my head, but some of the most common
requests and questions are "how do I get this nice syntatic sugar that
groovy, perl, etc. whatever offers."

You can kind of do some of this with commands (this is what we do), but
I wonder if there's some way to offer the facility without building the
sugar into the language.  It's still java scripting, but if there's
something odd in your problem domain you can go ahead and set it up.
Operator overloading is a common request (I'm not a big fan of it)... 

-----Original Message-----
From: Pat Niemeyer [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2005 9:03 AM
To: Furash Gary
Cc: beanshell-developers-5NWGOfrQmneRv+LV9MX5uipxlwaOVQ5f@public.gmane.org
Subject: Re: [Beanshell-dev] Project Status???

> Just curious.  What's going on with the project.  I haven't "heard" 
> much from Pat since the JSR.  I'm sure he has lots to do, but it's the

> strength of a project's leadership that make it fly open source wise.
> Is there a project plan Pat needs help executing?

I apologize for the lull in activity and communications on the project.
But rest assured that things will be picking up soon.

This should happen on two fronts:

First, I'd like to get some input from the community in prioritizing the
bug list so that we can draw a line and finalize the current release.  I
am looking into setting up a bug voting system on the new bug reporting
system.

Next, the JSR-274 group is getting organized.  This has been delayed a
bit (by me) but I hope to get the group meeting on a regular basis soon
so that we can present a plan for BeanShell 3.0 at this year's JavaOne.


Thanks,
Pat




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