SoftIntegration Releases Ch C/C++ Interpreter 4.7

duncanbojangles writes "SoftIntegration, Inc. today announced the availability of Ch 4.7, Ch SDK 4.7 and Embedded Ch 4.7. Ch is an embeddable C/C++ interpreter for cross-platform scripting, 2D/3D plotting, numerical computing, shell programming and embedded scripting. Finally, no more compiling a 30 line program just to see if a bit of code will work."

Comments

Bad link in article?

[ahrenritter]

I'm not sure where the link in the article (http://www.softintegration.com.nyud.net:8090/) came from, but it wasn't working for me so I tried www.softintegration.com and that worked fine.

Re:Bad link in article?

[duncanbojangles]

Yeah, I'm a dumbass. Sorry about that. I meant to be a good poster, but apparently not that many people are interested in this sort of thing so a coral cache link is pointless.

Re:Bad link in article?

[ahrenritter]

Ahah.. I didn't read the /. article about Coral. Finding out what it was made me do some research. The Coral Wiki has a FAQ entry regarding the fact that Windows 2000 DNS server is incompatible with Coral. Bummer.

I'm surprised there was so little feedback on your article. I thought it was interesting and I've enjoyed playing around with it. :)

See Also

[LarryRiedel]

Finally, no more compiling a 30 line program just to see if a bit of code will work."

See also the Free CINT and TCC.

Larry

Ch C/C++ Interpreter on slashdot

[gowen]

... it's advertastic!

IMHO

[stienman]

Personally, I liked advertisement articles on slashdot when they were more subtle. Now they pretty much don't care.

The software looks nice, and there is a free edition, but I don't like to tie myself to software tools that may change at the whim of the company (see Activestate's Komodo as an example, or CDDB, etc)

-Adam

Re:IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I liked advertisement articles on slashdot when they were more subtle. Now they pretty much don't care.

What's wrong with release announcements?

Slashdot claims to be about "News for Nerds". Doesn't the release of a new version of a bit of software count as news? When Longhorn is released, it'll be on Slashdot, and you won't be complaining that it's a Microsoft advertisement. When GCC 4.0 is released, it'll be on Slashdot, and you won't be complaining about GNU advertising their wares here.

Maybe this Ch isn't in the same league, but it's not some random hacker saying "look at my kewl new text editor, it's still version 0.00001 but it'll be better than emacs one day lol", it's an update to an established program that's just the sort of thing most Slashdot Developers readers are interested in.

You may well get tired of release announcements on Slashdot, and of course that's your right. But you know what? I get tired of people bitching about how Slashdot isn't as good as it used to be. If you don't like Ch, use one of the free alternatives or a different solution. If you don't like articles of this sort, don't bother reading them. If you don't like it here at all any more, go find a site you do like and read that. Lower blood pressure for everyone - sounds good, eh?

A floor wax *and* a dessert topping, too!

[mkcmkc]

So, you're saying that I can now enjoy the speed of an interpreted language and the beautiful lyric clarity of C++, both at the same time? Be still my heart!

(Yeah, I know, there are a few good uses for a C++ interpreter. Not many, though.)

Mike

Re:A floor wax *and* a dessert topping, too!

[Laxitive]

I think the best use of something like this would be for incremental and bottom-up development. Write some new code, test it immediately without having to build entire app again. Play with ideas quickly and once you have a good sense of how design should fall out, then go implement it (I do that now, except with prototyping in python and implementation in C).

I've often wished that I could have an interactive interpreter with C. Just so when I write a little bit of code, I don't have to compile it, and then write another little bit of code to test that it works like I expect it to, and then compile that other bit of code.. and then add it to the build (since you have to do as much work anyway if you have reasonably complex include/lib paths).

I can see this removing a bunch of headaches from C/C++ development.

But I agree with you, aside from that, other applications are limited.

-Laxitive

Re:A floor wax *and* a dessert topping, too!

[Brandybuck]

I think one of the biggest advances in software development in the past ten years, big enough to qualify for Brook's "silver bullet", are processors fast enough to eliminate the tediousness of the edit-compile-test cycle. If I keep my classes small and cohesive (like they should be), then compiling a small change only takes a few seconds. And that's without any precompiled headers!

When "make install" takes longer than "make", you've reached a critical point for *something*!

Re:A floor wax *and* a dessert topping, too!

[AuMatar]

Thats not a software improvement, thats a hardware improvement. You still have the edit-compile-test cycle, its just quicker. Being hardware eliminates it from contention for a silver bullet candidate. Now if it was that the speed of hardware allowed a new design technique that caused the productivity increase, it would qualify.

Re:A floor wax *and* a dessert topping, too!

[Brandybuck]

Yeah I know. But I still remember with fondness those days when I would start a compile and then go home for the evening...

Re:A floor wax *and* a dessert topping, too!

[AuMatar]

Remember with fondness? I had those days a month agop before we switched from HP-UX to linux (factor of 5 speed up, woooooo).

Simple Makefile

[rbowles]

You can emulate the "run at will" behavior of an interpreter with the simplest of Makefiles, for example...

-- Makefile --
# usage: make test [ARGS="args"]
PROG=hello
ARGS=world
all: $(PROG)

test: all # run the application
./$(PROG) $(ARGS)

-- hello.c --
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
int i;
for(i=(argc!=1);iargc;i++) {
printf("Hello, \"%s\".\n", argv[i]);
}
return 0;
}

Story Submitter

[duncanbojangles]

Hey, I submitted the story so it's not an advertisement. I downloaded the program and it's pretty cool. It can do some advanced math (complex numbers and the such) 2D plotting and 3D graphics, and is downright nifty. I like being able to just try out new things with the language without having to fill out the standard program.

Also, about the link, I'm sorry. I tried to be a good /.'er and put up the coral cache link, but I fudged it up.

Standard C++ interpreters are useful

[bolsh17]

Because, yes, it may be slow when you're testing,but then you will want to compile it properly. A C++ interpreter with a non-standard library is just an awkward means for writing low-level scripts.

Compilation speed is not the only issue, because there's the whole compile-link-go cycle. A large program is a complicated thing to stitch together from lots of object files and libraries, so linking is often the big wait. And complex GUI apps take work to get them to the point where you're finally ready to test that one-line change ;) Whereas it isn't necessary to stop the program to change it with some C++ interpreters.

steve d.