Not sure we’ll see generics - again a huge change to Xojo (and they are confusing as heck to new users but are wildly useful when you need them)
And there is some of this that you can already sort of do for yourself - see http://great-white-software.com/gws-rb-samples/TypedDict.zip for example
Lets you implement a dictionary that has strictly typed keys & values
Async/Await and some means of doing a better job of multi -core would be very welcome
Or the “Xojo Solution” akin to VS’s where you can have multiple kinds of exe’s all built from the same set of sources so sharing common code between a front end, back end, helpers etc would be trivial
We need, at some point, as it became the base of many current languages. Not sure what you say about Generics and Dictionaries. Generics are code, Dictionaries are data.
They just don’t need to use them and write crazy redundant spaghetti code instead to do whatever they want, the way they want. But Xojo devs are not only newbies, some are advanced ones and needing advanced features they are used to. Newbies, today, are used to, from other languages they are taught at the university. People compare languages. They say “This language has feature A? Yes, kind of… And Feature B? Partially. And Feature C? No. And D? No…”
[quote=437403:@Rick Araujo]We need, at some point, as it became the base of many current languages.
Not sure what you say about Generics and Dictionaries. Generics are code, Dictionaries are data.
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C++ generics are "data"andcodeto manipulate that data - Templates
They certainly werent the basis ofC++ though
Nor were Java Generics - they didnt get added until 2004 and I wrote a LOT of java before that
I dont believe they REQUIRE generics
Are they useful for async / await … sure
But I believe that async await could be done without generics
[quote=437403:@Rick Araujo]They just don’t need to use them and write crazy redundant spaghetti code instead to do whatever they want, the way they want. But Xojo devs are not only newbies, some are advanced ones and needing advanced features they are used to.
[/quote]
Sure - but the focus is on citizen developers who are generally not experienced coders (some are)
And things like these simply get misused (ie/ see Timer.Calllater which gets similarly misused and its MUCH simpler)
Citizen developers are not usually folks who HAVE had prior coding experience in Java, C++, PHP, Javascript etc
And that is the vast majority of developers using Xojo - so keeping the language & frameworks simple & approachable has been the long time focus and I suspect will continue to be
Plus for some of these features you need a guy like Joe R who understands them, the code that gets emitted by the front end and then the IR that gets compiled to make sure you do things rightand dont cause bigger issues.
Xojo doesn’t have Joe R any more and I dunno who could make generics, awsync / await, or other really substantial language changes like this happen
[quote=437420:@Norman Palardy]C++ generics are "data"and code to manipulate that data - Templates
(in Java) they didnt get added until 2004[/quote]
Not sure what kind of argument is this using ancient languages and putting us in a 15 years old context, but today, we have Generics all around, thousands of lines of code, in older languages like C++, Java and Pascal, but also in newer ones like Kotlin, Swift, Rust, Dart…
And Generics is a kind of DYNAMIC TYPE SYSTEM at compile time that renders in selected STATIC TYPED code once compiled.
[quote=437420:@Norman Palardy]I dont believe they REQUIRE generics
Are they useful for async / await … sure
But I believe that async await could be done without generics[/quote]
The old Async/Await can be done without Generics. Futures (that needs a dynamically typed system (compile time, not runtime)) no.
This focus must die. It must be something for all, including and “loved” by “citizen devs”.
Yet talking about it? Have one eye looking at the fish, and another at the cat. One day you wake up and notice all the languages have feature X, but not mine, and ask new people about your language design and will heard things like “phased out”, “old”, etc.
That’s my last argument. Anything more would be talking over and over about the same thing.
Have one eye looking at the fish, and another at the cat. One day you wake up and notice all the languages have feature X, but not mine, and ask new people about your language design and will heard things like “phased out”, “old”, etc.