EasyCoder is a high-level English-like scripting language that runs entirely in the browser and lets you write highly readable scripts to control the appearance and behavior of your web pages. It's much easier to learn than JavaScript but does many of the same things.
EasyCoder has its own website here on GitHub. Here you will find examples, tutorials and a programmer's playground where you can quickly create interactive apps.
- It's quick to write browser applications in EasyCoder. Website development is faster and sites are more reliable because they are more compact and easier to read.
- EasyCoder requires no build environment. It compiles plain-text scripts in the browser and runs them immediately. Compilation is usually in the low tens of millseconds, even on a smartphone.
- EasyCoder scripts are smaller than the corresponding JavaScript and are easy to read by most people, not just by programmers. This matters later on when maintenance is needed and the original programmer may no longer be available.
- EasyCoder is well suited to the construction of single-page web designs of unlimited size. The memory space occupied by JavaScript remains roughly the same no matter how many scripts and data you load and unload using REST. There is no memory or performance hit as the size of the project grows, because unused modules remain on the server, ready for use, instead of taking up permanent browser space.
- The language itself is a subset of plain English, with commands to do things that are complex to do in JavaScript such as handling REST dialogs, custom GUI elements and vector graphics. These features are implemented as plug-in JavaScript modules that leave you to focus on the user logic of your website or app.
- EasyCoder has a fully pluggable architecture. This allows any owner of JavaScript functionality to 'wrap' this in script commands and offer it as a plugin, allowing any site developer to use it without the need to learn JavaScript. Typical examples of such wrappers that are already provided are Google Maps and Markdown, both of which present a concise API and functionality that's easily understood and easy to describe in plain English. Well-encapsulated products are ideal candidates for implementation as EasyCoder plug-ins.
- EasyCoder has the ability to single-step scripts, showing you its variables at each step, which makes it easier to see what's happening.
- When things go wrong a comprehensive error message pops up, showing you which line of the code you reached. The error message also gets written to the browser console.
- EasyCoder includes a REST server that permits scripts to access resources on demand from the server rather than having them embedded in the page. Resources include scripts, HTML components, CSS and general data, and all can be loaded and unloaded dynamically. Two versions of the REST server are provided, written in PHP and Python respectively.
To use EasyCoder all you need is to provide a CDN reference to its main JavaScript file in the HEAD of your web page. It will call in any other JavaScript files it needs. An introductory example is given in the Introduction page of our website. You can alternatively build a standalone page where all the files are present on your own server, which avoids any possible risk of your site breaking when updates occur. We do our best to prevent this happening but it's impossible to cover all possibilities.
It is said that there's a shortage of competent programmers, a belief that's confirmed by the huge number of job vacancies all asking for skills such as React. If that's true then the use of React or similar tools in any project that is not managed by a permanent team is almost guaranteed to result in problems later with maintenance. If it's hard to find developers now then the chances of locating a skilled React engineer in 5-10 years' time, someone skilled enough to understand, take apart and rebuild your code at a price compatible with effective maintenance are vanishingly small.
EasyCoder tries to address this problem by offering a way to build websites that won't rely on such high-level skills, using the power of language rather than relying on elaborate structures to achieve the desired goal. In the hands of a competent programmer it makes little difference to the cost of building the project but a huge difference to that of maintaining it by people lacking those skills. EasyCoder scripts are easy to understand by anyone who has a good knowledge of what the site does, even by many people who aren't programmers at all.
There's a lot more information on our website, which includes example scripts plus the Codex; a full reference documentation on the language and a tutorial course suitable for desktop or mobile users. Anyone interested in helping develop EasyCoder will find an outline developer manual in the last of the links below.
The Codex is a page on our website that provides a tutorial series plus a programming playground to try out code and a complete programmers' reference to the EasyCoder language.
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