Omnimaga
Calculator Community => Major Community Projects => The Axe Parser Project => Topic started by: Runer112 on March 18, 2011, 02:32:15 am
-
Hi. I don't think this has ever been properly addressed, so I would like to formally address the matter of crediting others when it comes to programming works. Although everything that follows is only my opinion and you do not need to agree with it, I would like to state it. Feel free to post responses agreeing or disagreeing with me. The first paragraph will deal with what I would deem to be general etiquette. The second paragraph will be focused on Axe.
When making a project, you may often turn to others for help. Whether it's requesting sprites, using a routine somebody created, or simply letting someone optimize some parts of it, I feel that it is courteous to recognize their help in some form. In some cases, like in the case of minor code changes or optimizations by another person, a simple thank you would suffice for their aid. If you want, you can give them a small credit in the readme for your finished program. Or if you learned some stuff about coding from a help post somebody made, you may want to shoot them a quick thanks for the guidance, but it isn't necessary to cite small amounts general programming help. But I believe that if someone contributed specific help that your game relies on, like sprites or an important routine, it is fitting to cite who contributed that important part of your finished product. No need to put their name in your program's splash screen, or necessarily in the program at all. But a thanks at the bottom of a readme, no matter how small, can mean a lot. It means the efforts this person made to help you were really helpful after all. It means the time they put aside to help, no matter how much, was time spent well and worth spending again to help others.
When it comes to Axe projects, in a lot of cases the programmer will release the Axe source with their finished work. Sometimes he or she will say that their project is an Axe project but will want to keep the source protected, which is completely fine. But what can irk me a bit is seeing programmers produce something with Axe and fail to report is as being an Axe project. On one hand, I find it a little unsettling that it isn't mentioned, possibly as if they want others to think that they wrote it in assembly. But a possible slight deception is not what I find most unsettling. What I find unsettling is that failing to recognize it as an Axe project means failing to recognize perhaps the most important part of your project's existence: Kevin Horowitz. As I stated earlier, I believe it is proper to give credit in a final product to someone who may have provided you with some graphics or some code. But what about Quigibo? He provided every routine your program uses. He provided bug fixes for problems you might have run into. He provided a documentation and command information which likely taught you a lot of the concepts and commands you know. And most importantly, he provided his time. More than a year of it, so your program could exist. And I think the least any one of us can do to repay that is give a few seconds of thanks and recognition in return.
~~~
I can never focus on one project at once and have thus never really finished and published any projects, or the readmes to go along with them. I have never had the chance to give thanks in any published projects. But I have still programmed in Axe and enjoyed it for countless hours. So I would like to be the first to officially say:
Kevin Horowitz, thank you for the work you have done. Your helpfulness and commitment to Axe have known no bounds, and neither do my thanks to you.
-
Well said. That kind of thing really bothers me too. Give props to Axe and spread the word, people! Without it, your program wouldn't even exist :P
-
I concur. Give credit where credit is due.
-
Yeah, I've noticed that for a while, and it's troubling, especially since Axe projects go in the /asm folder at ticalc, so people simply try to make them look like their own ASM programs and don't mention Quigibo's work at all.
It's plagiarism, since much of it really is someone else's code (Quigibo's) and people are taking credit for all the low-level work that went into Axe. It's better than stealing someone else's program and releasing it as your own, but not by much.
-
I agree with this. Quigibo works really hard to make Axe great, and some people don't seem to mention it at all.
Honestly, I can't overstate how great Axe has been for me. Without it, some of my projects, such as Nostalgia, might never have existed, because not only did Axe give me the power to make it, but it also kinda inspired it, since it bridged the gap between BASIC and ASM.
-
I've wondered what I should do about that. I usually put something about axe parser in the options or about screen. Too bad I can't express my full thankfulness for axe in it, it would fill up the 8k limit. ;D
-
Axe seems to be one of that hardest-worked on projects out there, and is well worth a mention in the readme at the very least.
Yeah, I've noticed that for a while, and it's troubling, especially since Axe projects go in the /asm folder at ticalc, so people simply try to make them look like their own ASM programs and don't mention Quigibo's work at all.
It's plagiarism, since much of it really is someone else's code (Quigibo's) and people are taking credit for all the low-level work that went into Axe. It's better than stealing someone else's program and releasing it as your own, but not by much.
Maybe ticalc.org should have an /axe category, after all it did win the POTY hands-down
-
Yeah, I've noticed that for a while, and it's troubling, especially since Axe projects go in the /asm folder at ticalc, so people simply try to make them look like their own ASM programs and don't mention Quigibo's work at all.
It's plagiarism, since much of it really is someone else's code (Quigibo's) and people are taking credit for all the low-level work that went into Axe. It's better than stealing someone else's program and releasing it as your own, but not by much.
Maybe ticalc.org should have an /axe category, after all it did win the POTY hands-down
I second that!
-
My gratitude for Axe is >9000. YAY Axe!
-
Why is there a newprog category, if its not interpreted? Plus, most axe games are high-quality
-
There's a NewProg category? Axe really should get its own...
-
There's a NewProg category? Axe really should get its own...
I totally agree.
In fact, Axe is way more popular than NewProg.
-
What?
There's like maybe 15 newprog programs, but there's over 100 axe ones. Shouldn't axe have it's own section? ...
-
What is newprog?
And I agree -- I always try to credit Axe in my readmes and programs.
-
What?
There's like maybe 15 newprog programs, but there's over 100 axe ones. Shouldn't axe have it's own section? ...
But there is a fact against us... Axe games/programs are Assembly, so there could be some confusion there, people making Axe games claiming they were made in Assembly or the opposite.
What is newprog?
And I agree -- I always try to credit Axe in my readmes and programs.
NewProg is similar to Axe, but for the 68K series.
-
What is newprog?
And I agree -- I always try to credit Axe in my readmes and programs.
It's like Axe for the 68K models: http://ourl.ca/4302
Never was as popular as Axe, mainly because there are fewer people with 89Tis now :(
-
The reason why newprog had a new category is because you need an extra software to run games compiled in the language, unlike Axe, which lets you compile for no-stub or with any of the popular shells.
-
The reason why newprog had a new category is because you need an extra software to run games compiled in the language, unlike Axe, which lets you compile for no-stub or with any of the popular shells.
I have to agree with DJ and also because of what I mentioned before on this topic.
-
Basically to have its own section, Axe would need to require a proprietary shell that only launches Axe games. I'm unsure if many people would like, though, since most of us already got one shell that can run all other games installed, such as DCS or the discontinued MirageOS.
-
Basically to have its own section, Axe would need to require a proprietary shell that only launches Axe games. I'm unsure if many people would like, though, since most of us already got one shell that can run all other games installed, such as DCS or the discontinued MirageOS.
It'll start overflowing the ASM section soon though...
EDIT: On the other hand, the BASIC section is still far larger than asm/ ;)
-
I completely agree with Runer. Credit where credit is due. :)
Should this possibly be put in General Discussion, since even though it has a paragraph devoted to Axe, it is universally applicable?
-
Dunno, by far the biggest problem is with Axe (since it's so easy to get away with it). I just saw another ticalc.org Axe program that didn't mention Quigibo's project :(
I think it should be stickied so people who come here to download Axe can see it. Just my opinion, though. Ask Quigibo what he wants. It's his work, after all.
-
Awwww, thanks guys (and girls)! :D
I do like to give credit where credit is due, but I still feel like crediting me for every Axe program is really something that should be optional. I'm just providing a tool to help programmers use their creativity in more powerful ways in their own works. Film editing software for example, no mater how sophisticated, is generally not mentioned in the credits of a movie. Likewise, I don't feel that the author has an obligation to credit the software engineer when the author has put so much of their own time and ideas into their project. You don't credit TI when you write a program in TI-BASIC. Now that being said, if you feel like you are being helped on a personal level on the forums, fixing specific bugs, using example code/programs, etc. then credit is probably due to that person. And it is certainly not okay to make false claims about your work.
[rant]
I never imagined that Axe would get this popular because its really at a point now where I am honestly having trouble keeping up with all the new projects and development going on. It probably also has a lot to do with how busy I am. I've never overloaded myself like this before, with a job, research, school, girlfriend, responsibilities, its all so much to juggle, I haven't had free time for so long. I think last week alone I didn't get much more than 5 hours of sleep a night and there were 2 all-nighters in there. Its probably not healthy for me. Even on my break right now, I have so much work it doesn't feel like a break at all. But I've found a little bit of time to work on Axe luckily and I haven't lost interest in it.
[/rant]
Anyway, thanks for all the support everyone. Its this kind of gratitude that keeps me so motivated to continue with the updates.
-
I know I'm new here, so I don't really know how much this post really counts for anything, but I completely agree with this. I'm new to ASM, but not to programming. I stand in awe of anyone who not only writes an entire language and parser, but who also pushes it to the limit of optimization. I am also one of those people who starts a project and never finishes it. I always have been that way. That being said, even if I did have the programming knowledge and the understanding it would take to write something so big as Axe, I would never have gotten anything even close to what Axe is. In this sense, I respect everything Quigibo has put into this project and he surely deserves credit for it. I could never imagine how much effort and time it would take to write in assembly what I could easily throw together in a matter of minutes in Axe, even though I only started using it three days ago. In THIS sense, Quigibo definitely deserves credit for being the one who has empowered so many people by creating this language.
Thank you for everything you've done.
I feel like I'm stating the obvious, so I'll just leave at that.
EDIT:
Quigibo, the issue with your argument is that most of those things weren't made primarily by ONE person.
-
Ouch QUigibo, I hope your situation gets less hectic soon. X.x Never having free time sucks and can be discouraging at times. X.x
But yeah I think the reason why Axe got so popular compared to other such project attempts before was because of the way it was announced and the way the language is used. It is not because Omnimaga was very active when it started, because when Hybrid on United-TI was started, United-TI was getting about 2000-2500 posts per month (which is what Omni was getting when Axe got announced) and two other languages made front page news on Ticalc.org before. However these languages did not use the TI-BASIC tokens/editor and used an editor that wasn't very user-friendly or they were simply not that easy to learn. I think Antidisassemblage still required people to learn ASM, same for TI-Power Gold and EzAsm. As for other languages, the authors generally didn't realize the mangitude of such project and did premature announcments about it, so they lost interest.
Other languages migth have been great, especially BBC Basic, but there's something special that was done right in Axe: You pretty much answered TI-BASIC programmer's dream from the past decade. Now the only thing that could maybe hold off Axe is the confusing Getcalc() usage and the 8 KB 8xp code/16 KB 8xk limit, but I understand that both might be a challenge to fix.
In other word, awesome work Quigibo and thanks a lot.