On May 13, 10:34 am, hdante <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The "Flaming Thunder" looks promising, but without being free > software, it's unlikely it will create a large developer community, > specially considering both free general purpose and scientific > programming languages.
I'll agree that software libre has the advantage in creating a community, but the fact that this language's environment is proprietary need not be fatal. Consider the amount of work that gets done every day using Maple, Matlab, and Mathematica, for instance. I like software that's free (as in beer or as in speech) as much as the next guy, but I paid for the student version of Mathematica, and I consider it worth every single penny. I use it *at least* three or four times a week, for stuff that'd be, at best, extremely tedious or, at worst, impossible for me to do without it. I took a quick look at this "Flaming Thunder," and downloaded the command line Linux executable. While I haven't tried anything nontrivial in the language, I have to say it has several things going for it: * Cross-platform-ness. I like the idea of being able to compile the exact same source code for Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X, and Windows. If it truly is "write once, compile for the world," that's a nice plus. * Nice web site. Seriously. The web site is pretty slick looking, and that can only be a plus. The design and color scheme definitely remind me that this is an environment intended for scientific computing. * Nice name. This has got to be *the* coolest thing about the language. I mean, how can you go wrong using a language named "Flaming Thunder"? :) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list