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Re: [sc-users] Compiled language similar to sc ?



On Mar 10, 2009, at 7:19 PM, David Worrall wrote:

This is slightly off topic, but there was a recent post  (sorry, I've lost it)  describing csound as some sort of monolithic batch-processed monster, which is not quite accurate. I mention it in this context because they have gone down the track of separating the synth engine into a (C++) library from the API/ SClang-equivalent using wrapper code to generate the lang. interface for Java, Python etc. and the synth engine is incredible. No one I know uses cscore or whatever the lang. equivalent is now called.

That was me, shooting my mouth off. Glad to know the situation has improved. Still, I think I couldn't be bothered with anything less than a Haskell front-end for it. Google doesn't seem to know about such a thing, so it likely doesn't exist. I might well slash my wrists if I had to use Java (I have a very strong aversion to strict typing and excessive verbosity, going back to learning Pascal as a kid -- I wished the language would get out of my way and let me get some work done). Python would be cooler but I'm getting tired of imperative-style coding. Why are we still, in 2009, writing for (or do) loops? Patterns at least are some relief from all of that.

 Of course SCsynth made the separation first and its positive implications have been far-reaching.  It appears to me that if more stuff could be pushed permanently to SCsynth it might make SClang cleaner.

Curious observation -- sometimes I feel people try to push too much onto scsynth and it causes trouble (depending on the objective, of course).

If this suggestion is to take features out of the language and put them in the synth, I expect I would resist that since the current design suits my way of thinking nicely. I struggled conceptually with SC2 but found it much easier to organize my work in SC Server. So I hope, should it become "cleaner" in the future, it also doesn't become more difficult to use.

hjh


: H. James Harkins
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"Come said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet has yet chanted,
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