Update for August 2011

Well apparently I'm not a consistent blogger. I do, however, participate in the Cobra discussion group and the Cobra IRC channel on a regular basis. I have also been applying patches and making improvements which you can see on the Trac Timeline page.

Finally, I encourage people to take a look at the latest Help Wanted post to see if something catches your interest.

Cobra 2010-04-02 Released

A new version of the Cobra programming language, dubbed "Cobra 2010-04-02", has been released. This new version has several additions and refinements to both the language and the libraries. There have also been numerous fixes.

Release notes have been posted to the discussion forums and the downloads are ready.

The "How To" and "Sample" programs on the web site (and included in the release) have been expanded and updated.

New Cobra Slides

I presented Cobra to the Architecture SIG folks of the San Diego .NET Users Group. You can view the PDF Slides to learn more about Cobra.

New Sample Program Evolves Solutions

Are you familiar with the genetic algorithm (GA)? If not, the doc string contains the requisite Wikipedia links to the topic.

Genetic Algorithm Sample in Cobra

Presentation in San Diego

I'm presenting Cobra in San Diego to a .NET group on Wed Jun 10. If you're in the area and you're new to Cobra, or you'd just like to meet up, then come join the fun.

Information here.

Reaping The Benefits Of Cobra

MSDN Magazine has published an article, Reaping The Benefits Of Cobra by Ted Neward. There's nice coverage of key Cobra features and their advantages.

Cobra March 2009 Update

The update for March has been posted. Most notable are HTML syntax highlighting of source files and new sample programs.

Cobra Release 2009-04-07

Due to fixes and refinements, you'll want to upgrade if you're using any previous release. Or, if you're using Cobra from a Subversion workspace, you can just update at any time and run install-from-workspace in the Source\ directory.

Discussion thread / Announcement

Download

See the ReadMe.text file after unzipping.

Btw if you're using Novell Mono, do not use version 2.2. It has one or more bugs which make it unusable with Cobra. Use 2.4+ or an earlier version such as 2.0.

Cobra March 2009 Help Wanted

Want to help with an open source project? Today's post on "Help Wanted" outlines a number of ideas that you might find interesting.

Cobra February 2009 Update

February's update includes mixins, lambdas, constants and new documentation. Check out the Cobra February 2009 Update for more information. Or dive in now by getting the latest and exploring the docs and the wiki.

Informal Releases

I've decided to start a lightweight process I call "Informal Releases" which can be made quickly and which leverage the existing install-from-workspace script. However, you don't have to use Subversion to get such a release. You just download a zip file.

Making such a release is much less work for me than an official one, so I expect to make 1 - 4 of these per month. They don't replace the future official releases such as Cobra 0.9, 0.9.1, 1.0, etc. But they do give you early access to new features.

This is for folks are not comfortable installing Cobra out of a Subversion workspace. It's easy enough to do, but users may prefer to download a hand-picked snapshot instead.

Another route could have been to fully automate the build of a nightly package, but then you don't know if you're downloading a stable package when it's blindly made at the same time every day. In contrast, I'll cut an informal release when I'm fairly confident that the Cobra source repository is stable and has something worthwhile to offer over the last one.

You can, of course, continue to use a Subversion workspace.

There is a discussion thread on this topic which includes the link to Cobra 2009-03-01.

Cobra January 2009 Update

January's work was all about refinements. Fixes, better error messages, more docs, etc. Check out the Cobra January 2009 Update for more information. Or dive in now by getting the latest and exploring the docs and the wiki.

Cobra December 2008 Update

Cobra now supports extension methods on generic types, along with several refinements to the language and libraries. Check out the Cobra December 2008 Update for more information.

Cobra November 2008 Update

Cobra now has closures, streams, generic method constraints and more. Check out the Cobra November 2008 Update for more information.

Cobra October Update

Cobra has a new "install-from-workspace" script that is quite handy, and I've posted a Cobra October Update in the discussion forums.

Forums and Press Coverage

InfoWorld has covered Cobra with a general overview and a catchy title.

But I would have preferred "Cobra is faster and more deadly than Python".   :-)

And discussion forums are up! This is the main place for all Cobra discussion. After registering, check for your verification email in both your in-box and your spam folder.

New Cobra

I thought January's release of Cobra would be a 0.0.1 increment, but the progress was substantial enough to call it "0.7". See for yourself in the release notes and get yourself a copy!

In other news:

I added a section that I had forgotten in the Comparison to Python about how Cobra defaults to accurate arithmetic. Adding 0.1 to itself 10 times does not equal 0.999999...

There is a new sample that implements a FORTH interpreter. It needs a lot more work, but it's a good start with support for word definitions.

In less than 10 hours I fly out to Washington for Lang.NET 2008. I'm looking forward to geeking out about languages, compilers, interpreters and more. But I'm disappointed that the Spec# team won't be presenting as they did last time. Cobra also does contracts and I hope to integrate with their static analysis tool at some point.

Getting back to the Cobra language and compiler, I fell shy of the necessary clean up to open the source code, but I'm getting close. So when I get back the plans are:

• Open the source code some time in February. (MIT license)


• Install Trac for issue tracking and wiki.


• Set up discussion forums.


• Get new blogging software?

And then it's on to the next version!

New Cobra!

Cobra 0.6 was released on Dec 31. Release Notes, Downloads

And there is some Cobra discussion on the kplug-lpsg mailing list.

Where's Cobra?

The next version of Cobra is still on my hard drive because I'm obsessed with fixing warts and bugs in it. What I'm doing is making the next release more practical for you to sink your teeth into and offer meaningful feedback. (Of course, I make offsite backups to avoid catastrophe!)

The release notes, which I write concurrent to the work, are fairly long and this looks like it will be the largest release yet. Test cases are up to 454 and rising.

I don't have an ETA, but it will be at least two more weeks and possibly longer.

Also, Cobra will be going open source in the future with either the MIT or BSD license. The compiler itself is written in Cobra and much of the source is in an older coding style from when Cobra was less mature so I'll be cleaning that up first. I expect to open the source no later than release 0.7, but hopefully earlier as an independent event.

In non-Cobra news, I've become one of "The Three Hundred". $85/month is a pretty cheap price for longevity!

Cobra 0.4 Released, "Why Cobra?"

Cobra 0.4 has been released:

Download Page

Cobra 0.4 Release Notes

Also, a Why Cobra? document has been added and Coding for Quality has been broken out so that it can be directly linked to (it's important).

Feedback is always welcome:
contact -AT- cobralang -DOT- com