@saimon69

Quote:

there is a well known fame of some people to denigrate any attempt on making code or programs because it does not match their vision or expectations, and this attitude is around at least since the early 90s.

I can't say I see people denigrate "any attempt" but it's true that developers can sometimes be quite blunt in their responses, which may come across as rude and unhelpful. I take it mainly as a lack of interpersonal and social skills, rather than a spiteful need to patronize people and look down on newbies.

@kolla

I like the idea, but I'm afraid mentoring would only work if experienced developers had some free time on their hands. Which doesn't happen to be the case: few people find enough time to work on their own projects

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AmigaOne X5000/020 @ 2GHz / 4GB RAM / Radeon RX 560 / ESI Juli@ / AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition
SAM440ep-flex @ 667MHz / 1GB RAM / Radeon 9250 / AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition

@Trixie

Actually the bigger culprits seems to be - at least in Amiga world - a selected number of very vocal users;
that in the long term might also explain why PR on Amigaland is not the best ("when it's done","two more weeks",etc.)

[and i cannot change my avatar from workplace, maybe the firewall get in the way]

Last edited by saimon69 on 20-Sep-2019 at 09:17 PM.
Last edited by saimon69 on 20-Sep-2019 at 09:17 PM.

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@Trixie

If I could get AmigaE to fulfill its role without encountering bugs in the compiler, I'd say to send me the newbies. Working the bugs out and such are quite tiring.

I think that we talk too much but do little if not nothing...

@kamelito

Very true. It's about 7 years since I started teaching Moya "Cammy" McGeough how to code in AmigaE. Maybe we can fix the compiler bugs.

@amigadave

Quote:

So my question is this; how do we replace these programmers with new programmers?

I'm a next generation Amiga user and a casual developer. In my view AmigaOS 4 is a hobby operating system which should be fun to use and fun to develop new games and applications to.

I think the key to motivating the current developers and attracting new ones, is to make the Amiga software development as easy and effortless as possible, i.e. make it fun.

At the moment, when developing new software, it's really easy to crash the Amiga and hard not to crash it. It should be the opposite.

In the past AmigaOS API was high level and easy to use, but today AmigaOS API is painfully low level and cumbersome to use, even though it has been upgraded.

I'm quite sure that usability improvements in the AmigaOS API and in the development tools will attract more people to try Amiga programming.

Maybe the easiest way to make Amiga programming easier is to provide code templates (skeleton programs) for the developers. I for example could really use C language templates for AmigaOS 4 libraries and devices that could be compiled straight away.

@jap

Quote:

In the past AmigaOS API was high level and easy to use, but today AmigaOS API is painfully low level and cumbersome to use

You clearly don't remember the 1.x days because otherwise you wouldn't be saying that In fact, the AmigaOS API was hardly high-level and easy to use in the past.

True, it is now more complex - mainly because AmigaOS4 can do more things - but the API is more high level than it has ever been.

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The Rear Window blog

AmigaOne X5000/020 @ 2GHz / 4GB RAM / Radeon RX 560 / ESI Juli@ / AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition
SAM440ep-flex @ 667MHz / 1GB RAM / Radeon 9250 / AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition

In my opinion, the main problem is that even if someone wants to program on the Amiga, he is discouraged by the lack of ready to use components (I'm not talking about GUI here but about all aspects of application functionality). This means that to write anything, the developer must write a lot more code than if he wrote the same in i.e. .Net
Considering the fact that almost no one is programming for Amiga professionally but everything is done after hours, it is not surprising that few programs are created and rather slowly.
My project API2 aims to solve the problem of the cumbersome to use AmigaOS API by creating ready-to-use components and appropriate tools covering all aspects of application development. Its goal is also to introduce one common API for all AmigaOS variants and enable migration to a new operating system if it is ever made. In addition, API2 is done in such a way that it minimizes the number of crashes of the entire system - instead, an exception is thrown and if it is not handled, the program will end.
I'm working on this project for sometime and it is progressing nicely. I hope to show some more of it in a few months.

@Trixie

Quote:

You clearly don't remember the 1.x days because otherwise you wouldn't be saying that In fact, the AmigaOS API was hardly high-level and easy to use in the past.

My Amiga coding history starts from 3.x. Before that I wrote machine language programs for Commodore 8 bit computers. Compared to that, AmigaOS API was advanced

What I meant to say earlier was that in the past AmigaOS API seemed high-level and easy to use. But now the improved API, which is present in AmigaOS 4, feels like low-level and hard to use eventhough it's a clear improvement to the earlier version.

Quote:

True, it is now more complex - mainly because AmigaOS4 can do more things - but the API is more high level than it has ever been.

That's true.

Last edited by jap on 23-Sep-2019 at 06:24 PM.
Last edited by jap on 23-Sep-2019 at 05:32 PM.

@smith

Quote:

My project API2 aims to solve the problem of the cumbersome to use AmigaOS API by creating ready-to-use components and appropriate tools covering all aspects of application development.

Any chance of AmigaOS 4 release?

@smith

Looks really neat!

Is there any chance that this will be open source further down the road? It would be a real shame if the AROS developers would need to do something like MUI -> Zune again.

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Re:API2
According to Smith's Patreon page, API2 is a superset of C with some OOP concepts built-in. It is linked from his Trifle subdomain page listed in his post.

I hope this turns out better than PortablE, ChrisH's AmigaE superset transpiler with strong type support added. The last I heard about him, ChrisH was deathly ill and hasn't been heard from for quite some time. I feel bad for him but I also regret that his closed source project might not be completed.

@amigadave



I tend to find bribery or kidnapping is the only true way to get people interested in the Amiga lately.

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@jap

API2 will be released for all AmigaOS and AmigaOS like systems. I have started with classic AmigaOS and hardware because I want to be sure it is usable on such a config.

@sTix

If I ever lost interest in developing API2 I will open source it.

@Samurai_Crow

API2 uses ordinary C compiler. Extensions are done with macro definitions.

@Trixie

Quote:

@kolla I like the idea, but I'm afraid mentoring would only work if experienced developers had some free time on their hands. Which doesn't happen to be the case: few people find enough time to work on their own projects

For Amiga this is true, for open source in general it is not, as most open source is written by professional developers doing their paid work. But even for hobby projects it is done. HaikuOS for example, who use Google's Summer of Code, where students code on a summer project, with mentors. AROS could also participate like this

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B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@amigadave

Outside programmers doe everything as long as they get money for it our as long as it meets their interests.

Invest millions of dollars
or
make AOS4 Open Source
or
port Intuition to Linux
or
give away hundreds of Amigas, Vampyres or A1s for free
or
fill every A1X5K with dollar notes


It's so simple, just do it.

@smith

Macro languages are fine in my book.

@Samurai_Crow

Quote:

Samurai_Crow wrote: Re:API2 According to Smith's Patreon page, API2 is a superset of C with some OOP concepts built-in. It is linked from his Trifle subdomain page listed in his post. I hope this turns out better than PortablE, ChrisH's AmigaE superset transpiler with strong type support added. The last I heard about him, ChrisH was deathly ill and hasn't been heard from for quite some time. I feel bad for him but I also regret that his closed source project might not be completed.

That's terrible news about ChrisH, I hope he gets well soon. Do you have any contact address for him, email, or snail mail? I also liked his work on PortablE, and the advice he often offered to new programmers.

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