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        Arimaa >> Off Topic Discussion >> The Cobra Language
        
(Message started by: omar on Mar 15^th, 2009, 7:39pm)

Title: The Cobra Language
Post by omar on Mar 15^th, 2009, 7:39pm

I just came across this new language which I fell in love with as soon as I read the "Why" page. Still have to download and try it out. But I thought I would let others know about it, because it sounds like the ideal language I've been looking for and perhaps others in the Arimaa community might find it interesting as well. I've always felt there was a need for a language that allows programmers to express themselves quickly and is based on a virtual machine so that it is portable and executes faster than interpreted languages. Maybe this is the language that satisfies that need.

http://cobra-language.com/docs/why/

I'm always on the lookout for new languages and try them out even if they are very new. I experimented with Python when it wasn't even object oriented; and Java the first week Sun released it. But, I probably would not have come across this language yet had the creator of the language not stumbled across the Arimaa site and replied back to my 'Thanks for trying Arimaa' email (which I send to all new users). His signature had this link below it which caught my eye.

http://cobra-language.com/

Title: Re: The Cobra Language
Post by omar on Mar 16^th, 2009, 7:54am

If anyone is going to try this on a linux box, here are some notes that might help.

You have to first install the mono virtual machine from:
http://www.mono-project.com/

But use the 2.0 source release since there is a bug in 2.2 which causes problems for Cobra. The 2.4 version fixes the bug, but is not released yet. You can download it from here:
http://ftp.novell.com/pub/mono/archive/2.0/sources/

The 'make install' for mono did not automatically set the permissions correctly, so when I tried to compile C# programs using mcs it kept giving errors that it could not find system libraries. Had to do the following to fix it:
cd /usr/local/lib/mono
find . -type f -name '*.dll' -print -exec /bin/chmod o+rx '{}' \;
find . -type f -name '*.mdb' -print -exec /bin/chmod o+r '{}' \;

Install of Cobra using the 2009-03-10 informal release worked fine.

Here is a cobra Hello World program:

Code:

class Hello
def main is shared
print 'Hello, world.'

Title: Re: The Cobra Language
Post by clauchau on Mar 18^th, 2009, 6:12am

Thanks Omar for the news. I too love (human and) computer languages. At first glance I like Cobra a lot and I'll try it for my next personal and professional developments. Of course I need to use it for real before I could be sure I won't feel the need for my beloved C++ and Ruby any more. I'm a bit afraid of the bloated .NET/mono library though.

I also still feel like going on with discovering :

Haskell http://www.haskell.org/ - which the author of Cobra mention and whose mathematical orientation fascinates me and I hope I'll use it some day to explore sampling and evaluating Arimaa game states - and

Alloy http://alloy.mit.edu - which isn't a programing language but a promising modeling tool for any kind of programming structure and I hope I'll use it some day to model Arimaa rules and programs.

Title: Re: The Cobra Language
Post by omar on Mar 18^th, 2009, 8:54am

on 03/18/09 at 06:12:38, clauchau wrote:

I'm a bit afraid of the bloated .NET/mono library though.

Chuck is also planning to have a version of Cobra for the Java VM. After all Cobra is just a language and not tied to any particular VM.

The long awaited Parrot Virtual Machine was released today.
http://www.parrot.org/
Eventually a version of Cobra could also target the Parrot VM.

I knew about Haskell but had not heard of Alloy. Thanks for the link.

Title: Re: The Cobra Language
Post by Tuks on Mar 18^th, 2009, 9:54am

hmm, that sounds interesting, i might just try some of the simple stuff, i dont want to take the majorly used and expensive programs until i have the money, time and hopefully a teacher to be good at them

Title: Re: The Cobra Language
Post by Cobra on Jun 2^nd, 2009, 11:06pm

MSDN Magazine has published an article, Reaping The Benefits Of Cobra (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd882513.aspx) by Ted Neward. There's nice coverage of key Cobra features and their advantages.