I thought I should make a small mention that my PortablE programming language has finally gone into Beta testing :-)
What is PortablE?It is a complete rewrite of the (once very popular) AmigaE programming language. Unlike traditional compilers it outputs code in C++
or other languages, with all your comments & formatting intact! It adds many modern new features, such as type checking, while trying to stay fairly backwards compatible.
As the name implies, the aim is to make it portable across many OSes, languages & CPUs, although currently it is limited to OS3 & OS4. This portability aim means that compatibility with the old AmigaE is not as high as it could be.
You can read the manual
here.
What do you mean by Beta?It has most bugs fixed, certainly all the ones that I could find. And it is close to being "feature complete", although it still has a few things missing (which I hope will be added sooner rather than later).
Where can I get it?Please join the AmigaE mailing list, and ask for me for it there:
http://www.freelists.org/list/positronWhat are the highlights of PortablE?Compared to AmigaE, too many to list here! Even the
pretty large manual struggles to cover everything. But here are a few examples:
* A fully automatic module compiling system, so you don't need any Make files or IDEs!
* Can generate code for both OS3 & OS4. Support for more OSes to be added later.
* Completely type checked, which makes it much easier for beginners to learn, and also much better for large object orientated projects. And type checking was really needed for the various kinds of lists, immediate lists, typed lists, copies of lists, strings, e-strings, etc, because before it was very easy to make mistakes.
* The type checking is better than you get in Java or C++, so it should get in your way less. One reason people liked AmigaE was that it didn't have a type system to annoy you. I hope to strike a balance between those two extremes!
* Rather better & more accurate error reporting, although I'm sure this can be improved even more.
* Much better support for modern Object Orientation (OOP), if you like that sort of thing (I do!). And OOP is far easier to learn & use, because of the type checking.
* Fixes lots of silly limitations of AmigaE, e.g. Globals can be declared anywhere, as can objects. e.g. RAISE works with user procedures *and* methods. e.g. You can type NEW 'string' to create an e-string copy.
How do you pronounce PortablE ?!?You do ask difficult questions! ;-) While you could say "portable E", I tend to just say "portable".
It's name was really a play on words, but one I didn't think too hard about how you should pronounce. We already had "AmigaE" & "CreativE", so "PortablE" was about as far as my dim imagination went!
