Dev Diary (May 2017)

Corey Montella - 01 Jun 2017

(Eve is a new programming language, and this is our development blog. If you’re new to Eve, start here)

In May we released Preview 3 of v0.3, published some new documentation, and had a meetup.

Preview 3 of v0.3

The Eve Syntax Returns

The parser for the Eve syntax returns in Preview 3. While the parser is included again, there’s still no editor bundled, so parsing a program written in the Eve syntax can accomplished in JavaScript like so:

import {Program} from "witheve";

let program = new Program("program name");

program.load("some-eve-code")

Where some eve code is a complete multiline Eve document (i.e. the contents of a *.eve file). A second method is to download eve-starter, and put your *.eve file in the “programs” directory. Then launch the program switcher (run npm start in the eve-start directory, then direct your browser to localhost:8000), and you will see your program listed in the left panel.

We also updated the example Eve applications for v0.3. This entailed removing any references to databases, and updating records to use the new namespaced tags. We haven’t documented the various watchers yet (e.g. html, svg, events) so if you’re curious how to use these, you can use the example programs as a reference for now.

Documentation for v0.3

As part of this release, we’re also making available our documentation refresh. We’ve updated the layout to match the new Eve website, and we’ve added some summary documents to help new users get oriented in the language. These include:

- A new quickstart – We’ve got a new version of the quickstart that aims to be a 5 minute introduction to Eve. In 6 blocks we introduce blocks, records, and the difference between binding and committing records.

- A new syntax reference – this is a 3 page document that acts as a reference for the Eve syntax. You can view it online, or print it out to keep handy on your desk.

- A library reference – This page will act as an index to the standard library. For every function in the standard library, we list its arguments as well as an example demonstrating its usage.

These documents represent the minimum viable documentation to the Eve language. We hope you’ll take a look, and let us know if anything need more clarity or if we’ve omitted any important details. As we update the current docs for v0.3, they’ll become available on the v0.3 docs site.

One other note about documentation – from now on we’ll be maintaining documentation for the current and future versions of Eve. To that end, when you go to docs.witheve.com, you’ll currently see an option to select v0.2 or v0.3

Community

Eve Around the World

Copenhagen, June TBD

Just a reminder that Zubair is hosting a meetup in Copenhagen this June. We’ll let you know when a date has been finalized.

San Francisco, Wednesday May 31

Last night we held our first official Eve meetup at our offices in downtown San Francisco. I’d like to thank everyone. Myself and the rest of the team enjoyed meeting everyone. We had an opportunity to finally meet some long-time users, as well as introduce ourselves to people finding Eve for the first time.

Please, if you have any feedback or ideas for future meetups, send me an e-mail at [email protected]

San Francisco, Tuesday June 27

If you wanted to attend the meetup but couldn’t for some reason, don’t worry – we’ll be holding another one at the end of this month, again at the Kodowa office in downtown (SOMA) SF. Please see this link to RSVP.