DSP Robotics Support

It would make every learning eagre FlowerStoners life a whole lot easier if you Malc/Support made comments in the Ruby code for explanaition of what is happening in there. Yes, please on every line of code, for every sign and letter. IOW, not just what each line does but also why is is written as it is.

First of all I want commenting in the arp part of the example synth. But please make it a habbit to comment and explain along with the code.

And I have an issue with FS (free) beeing very slow compared to SM. It even freezes for a second or two every tenth second or so. This is very annoying and frustrating when you at the same time struggle to learn something.

If I get help with theese two issues I might concider robbing a bank to go and buy the upgrade.

Commenting the example synth arp (gui & midi part): I would guess it takes half an hour max if you are skilled and do use the touch method when you write and at the same time know your code.

149$ for 30 mins of work = 298$ per hour

Also remember the better you make understanding Ruby accessible through the software and resources for people the more people is probably going to buy this.

I posted a similar comment here; viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1121
But it seems that developers are very busy putting to point the Ruby part.
Hope that we will have detailed ruby tutorials.
I believe that many users will this, and it would be in the benefit of developers.

Are you so desperate that you have to shout for Malc's attention that loud in the title?
Strange behaviour...
I don't think that Malc should spent much time for what you're begging here! There're much more important things to fix. And that has to be done as fast as possible. So i hope the priorities are well defined for that.
If you want to learn ruby there're many tutorials and help sites on the net. Some of them have been posted here already. Most of them can be found here:

http://www.dsprobotics.com/support/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=598&start=0

The ruby documentation in the FS manual also gives a lot of hints and descriptions.
Ruby is no proprietary of FlowStone but a widespread self-sustaining programming language which has to be learned individually if one likes to get used to it. That shouldn't be the task of FS developers
However if there're some FS related questions they should be asked specific to that issues.
I guess we are a good enough community with some experienced users who could help each other without directing all personal indispositions to Malc!

@stw: I sort of see your point.

But the intro in the manual does only scratch the surface and it lacks context, it does not explain things in detail and examples of audio andmidi processing is very limited. We do not all have the same intelligence or knowledge to just jump into a programming language. For DSP Robotics' developers it would not be hard or tak a lot of time to write proper comments so one could get started and get the grip of some consepts in practice.

I know there are many things to be done and features to be implemented. But to be honest. SM and FS is supposed to be a easy way into programming. The Ruby part has completely removed the easy part out of the equation. And we depend of Ruby to do things that in my opinion should be possible in the good old SM enviroment.

Despite that I feel more and more like learning Ruby. But I am an unpatient soul and want to get started making things. Witout a proper guide to Ruby this is not possible. Some very well commented and explained pieces of more complex Ruby code merging audio, midi and gui together would help ALOT!

ups, sorry i shouted again

Question is do DSPR want people to get started or not.

yep i agree tor!

im lost on how our stuff should differ to all the ruby tutorials around the web because we have to do things a bit differently from normal ruby programming and also some things in a normal install of ruby are not available to us
so i too would like to see some other tutorials and examples! especially one highlighting the differences between our ruby and theirs!

I was reading the other night that it is a best practice for programmers to comment out their code!

Im doing things with ruby, just small things but i am doing them because that's the way to do it according to ppl on the net, i do not understand a lot of it or what it is doing within the code just that it does what i require! some i do understand but i would understand a bit more from well commented examples! maybe some of you guys with the knowledge could comment out the user examples instead of the busy devs! that would be spot on!

@stw that's true we are a good community! one of the best Ive been a member of, everyone here and back in the homeland have been great in my eyes, but not a lot of rubyists yet, and if i were to start asking the few of you guys with the skills, all the things i want too, then you would get sick of me quite quickly i fear! lol i would need a section on the forum just for me ha ha!

that is something we should have though! a dedicated fs ruby section on the forum!

Best regards

tor wrote:Yes, please on every line of code, for every sign and letter. IOW, not just what each line does but also why is is written as it is.

maybe that would be really long - too long? ... but some more comments would be helpful for sure...
i think stw is right, there are more important things to do then beeing a ruby teacher for us! me , i`m completely newbe to to programming but with a little passion you can get good experiences and a good learning curve by starting with easy stuff, and i think for reading complex programs (like audio, midi and gui all in one, really complex please!) you will need knowledge and intellengence also when its well commented, maybe better to start programming by yourself with little things that make you happy when you got it after some hours ,... my expierience is not that big but what i learned was, you cannot learn a language by reading just the holy bible, you have to start programming and learning it by doing it and than one day you understand what the bible tells you for me it was the same with sm too, i watched some schematics but i understood them not until doing things by myself..

tor wrote:The Ruby part has completely removed the easy part out of the equation

i think that ruby is not the holy grail to get everything done with few lines of code, fs is still the easy graphical programming language like it always was and you don`t need ruby to get the things done it is just a great feature to enlarge your possibilities and make things more easy! just watch the graphical stuff, like knobs... sure some more examples would be a great thing, but to say

tor wrote:Question is do DSPR want people to get started or not

(.. then teach us ruby!?)..hmmm
its up to you, if YOU want to start then start, everything you need is here...

also a good community that will help out if possible..

+1 for the ruby section in the forum

I think it's a perfectly valid point that the 'official' examples have a little more commenting.
I wouldn't expect there to be huge interactive tutorials at this stage - it's quite right that improving the software be the dev's top priority. But when an example is being used to demonstrate a new feature, it's only right that we should be able get some understanding of HOW it works, as we might have different requirements than what the example shows, so we need to understand how to customise things.
As Jay quite rightly pointed out, when you embed Ruby inside FS it becomes a slightly different beast, and all those lovely on-line manuals and tutorials for "general purpose Ruby" can't take that into account. A good example is that most beginner's Ruby examples rely on "gets" and "puts" to get data in and out, which doesn't work at all when inside FS - until you master the FS inputs/outputs, it's hard to progress with even the simplest tutorials.

I think it will be just like it was with assembly in SM - as NuBeat says, is isn't essential for many things, and some users won't want to learn it at all - but the users that do get good at it can still make modules that the 'non-Ruby' or "non-assembly" people can use and abuse by linking the modules.
And in time, the tutorials and what-not will appear - even for the "coding guru's", Ruby is a very new thing in FS, and before writing tutorials etc. it's important to do a lot of experimenting to make sure that we're not teaching anyone bad habits - especially as the Ruby implementation is still being tweaked by the dev's to make it more robust.

We also badly need somewhere to keep all the useful stuff - some very good things have been posted already, but they are buried away in forum threads where they are not easy to find. We really could do with a 'Ruby Zone', and maybe somewhere that tutorials can be "stickied" to keep them all together. Better still, a Wiki with a nice WYSIWYG editor (the old editor was just too clumsy to make using the Wiki any fun at the SM site).

I think Outsim needs a geeky female tech-writer to help out also

Now you got my attention!

I wonder if whenever she posts something the board gets in "Penny got into the comic book store" mode?