Oxygen Basic
Information => Open Forum => Topic started by: Mike Lobanovsky on May 26, 2018, 02:21:13 AM
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Gentlemen,
There are many complaints that the OxygenBasic syntax is too "polymorphic" and insufficiently covered in the existing "help" file, and that its modifications that are coming almost every passing day are not always backwards compatible and tend to break up your own code base.
Let me stress once again that O2 is currently still at its alpha development stage and as such, it is not yet recommended for use in longstanding projects. When using alpha-stage tools in your software, it is your own responsibility to maintain it in sync with the WIP framework (O2 in this particular case) it is based on, rather than ask the developer (Charles in this particular case) to roll back their work to what you think would be best for your immediate needs.
There are some distinguishing features of alpha and beta stages that you should be aware of.
Alpha:- Base functionality is neither complete nor final. Changes, improvements, additions or rollbacks may come without prior notice at the developer's (-ers') option to best fit their original design concept.
- Code base is only exemplary and serves exclusively as a test suite in everyday dev work. Example scripts come and go in whole or in part as functionality evolves or shrinks to reflect the developer's (-ers') progress towards their goal.
- No backward or forward compatibility is sought or guaranteed. There is no stable ABI, and function parameterization may change however the dev team sees best fit to keep the syntax uniform and compatible across the product.
- Product testing is private (a.k.a. "in-house"). (it is only because Charles' "house" is a one-man-only business that we're involved in "field-testing" his WIP through his git releases and this forum, which doesn't however alter the alpha nature of such tests)
- User help is not provided because there's no reason to walk an extra mile and document features that may change or disappear completely any time.
Beta:- Functionality is complete. No more API's are added or withdrawn. All fixups and bug-killing are of pure maintenance nature and come transparently to the user/tester.
- Additional functionality comes through extra optional parameterization of existing API's that doesn't break up the API/ABI backward compatibility.
- Product testing goes public, and the users may start building their own applications that will serve as additional test cases to the standard unit test suite inherited from the alpha stage.
- Practical help manuals start to appear based on the fixed functionality that's guaranteed to remain unchanged for a substantial period of time.
That said, you will probably understand why neither donations, nor wikipaedia popularization, nor yells for help, nor criticisms are likely to speed up O2 development any faster than it currently goes. There are only 24 hours to a day, and the alpha stage is going to take just as long as it's physically possible for Charles to complete it as quickly as possible. :)
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thank you for the explanation
it would be good if this text is evident in the forum to avoid confusion on the part of the interested parties.
and I'm sorry if my previous text may seem somewhat rude, perhaps because of the automatic translation
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Thank you, Mike.
That clarifies very well the differences between Alpha and Beta software. And I am endeavouring to bring the alpha stage of o2 to a timely conclusion since its core features are fairly stable now. My next step is to do a 64bit trawl through the examples, before attending to further documentation.
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Thank you Mike,
That is probably the most succinct explanation of Alpha and Beta that I have seen to date.
I must admit that I hadn't noticed that O2 was still in alpha, but there again, I'm just fiddling about with it right now while banging together my back-end software.