ArianeSoft managed to create quite a splash with its recent discount on its PPL programming language. However, little was known about PPL except its price – and this is where we dug in. Read on for an interesting interview about PPL’s history and its future roadmap!
Please tell us more about you and your company
My name is Alain Deschenes, I started programming at the age of 12 around 1986. I started on an Apple IIGS with AppleSoft Basic and 65c02 assembly. I then moved on to a Mac IIvx and worked with it for a couple years learning Pascal, C and 68000 assembly. In the early 90’s I started working on the PC and moved from there to Borland C and Borland Delphi.
From my early days of programming, I was passionated about programming languages. I wrote a few basic interpreters back then, I had a facility learning all kind of new languages from Lisp, Python, Forth, Cobol and so on.
In 1995, I started working for a company called Megadata Group Inc. in Montréal, Québec. They just started working in the EDI (Electronic Data
Interchange) field. The main bulk of our business was with accounting packages that we wrote modules for in Cobol. Then in 1998, they offered me to write a custom EDI software that we’ve called MegaEDI. As of today I am still working full time at this place and still working on MegaEDI.
I wrote the whole thing in Borland Delphi 5.
ArianeSoft Inc. was officially in business in April 2006. The main motivation behind ArianeSoft is to provide people with great softwares at an affordable cost. I also do custom programming for business of any kind. I haven’t put much effort into this aspect of the business yet since most of my time was dedicated to PPL. I have done a few contracts for a medical clinic and am looking forward doing more custom programming in the future.
What was the motivation to create PPL? How do you position yourself in comparison to .NET and native C++ development?
In January 2004, I started working on PPL as a side project. I have had a few Palm’s and PocketPC’s at that time and they were either hard to programmed with or require expensive softwares. The solutions offered were either very slow or required big runtime libraries. PPL was a great opportunity for me to learn programming on the PocketPC’s and put my knowledge of writing compiler/interpreter to use. The idea of programming easily on these little devices and be able to do so on the road was one of the main goals of PPL. In April 2004, I released the first beta of PPL on PocketMatrix.com and kept on releasing more and more betas until September 2006 when I decided it was time for PPL to hit 1.0.
I have always dream about writing my own RPG one day and having a nice Ultima-like RPG on the PocketPC/Smartphone is still one I cherish to this day (I know I am old school for games). There are no programming language that offers an easy 2D game creation toolkit in a professional development environment for the PocketPC, Embedded Visual C++ is the only solution for some serious game programming but it is not easy to learn and you need external graphic libraries. Game programming requires way more than just a graphic library, you need physics, sprite functions, particles, music and so much more. PPL combines most of these into one small package.
PPL has not been put together to compete with the likes of Microsoft because it simply cannot. It is mainly a one man’s project. I simply wanted to offer a nice complete all-in-one alternative to the big programming environments.
Another goal of PPL was simplicity and the small size. PPL is small, very small. In one 1 mb file, you get a fast compiler, interpreter with no variable types, object-oriented syntax, garbage collection, complete graphic engine, particle engine, sprite engine, music engine, cross-platform easy assembler, hundreds of built-in functions, encryption and compression functions and I forget so much right now.
I believe PPL offers the easy the simplicity of .NET. .NET seems like a nice platform, I have never gotten into it much because C/C++ offers what I need, I need speed of execution. I don’t like the idea of having runtime libraries (VB) when I program. Now that most WM devices will include .NET frameworks I am starting to like the solution a little more.
How fast is PPL compared to .NET and C++ apps?
PPL is an interpreted language written by a small company. It won’t ever compete the likes of .NET and C++. Yes, .NET is interpreted too but the the amount of people behind this project is huge compared to PPL. C++ is extremely fast. On the other hand PPL compares favorably to Perl, Lua and most smaller programming language. PPL offers an easy cross-platform assembly language called PASM which dynamically compiles to machine bytecodes to help you when you need raw speed. I plan on using PASM to build version 2.0 of PPL.
Do PPL apps need an extra runtime library? If yes, how big is this library?
No, it is all included in the executable files you created with PPL. One of the main goal of PPL was to stay away as much as possible from external runtime libraries. The nice thing about PPL is the fact that you can create very small .ppc files (compiled bytecodes files) that you can use directly with the PPL.EXE program. You can always compile pieces of code and attach .ppc files together when you need it at runtime. You can distribute PPL projects as either an executable file or as a group of .ppc files along with the PPL.EXE file.
Do you need to pay a license fee on a per-pcs basis when applications created in PPL get sold?
No, PPL is license free for shareware and freeware softwares. Commercial applications of PPL are subject to licensing but this is on a per case basis.
Could you maybe name a few ‘big’ apps written in PPL? Which PPL apps are you especially proud of?
PPL is still young, it will take a little more time until we see something big coming out but there are a few that have made the news.
The iPhone “emulator” for the PocketPC was written in PPL, the original one, the one you first saw on Youtube in April 2007. The best examples of what can be achieve with PPL are the Editor and Visual Form Builder that were written and maintained by Brad Manske. People are starting to come out with some nice applications written in PPL and cannot wait to see what will be coming out in the future.
Many developers were recently left sitting in the rain as AppForge went belly-up. What can you offer developers to ‘migitate’ the single-source problematic?
PPL is growing every month. More people are moving to it and even big companies are starting to find an interest in it. I am working hard on creating a community behind PPL. I think this is what will keep it alive through the years. Customer service is our top priority, our forums are a live proof of this. I have invested so much time of my life into PPL that there is no turning back for me, I will see PPL become an official alternative to the big names. I have some big plans for future versions that I am very exited about.
Do you plan to support any additional platforms? Symbian or Palm OS maybe?
I am focusing on WM platforms for now. The Smartphone is a huge market right now, I want to concentrate on it. In version 2.0 I plan on adding more platforms.
Which mobile OS do you expect to dominate the market in 5 years?
I am not in a position to predict things but from what I see, Windows Mobile is gearing up to be a leader if Microsoft put the efforts needed into it. It has the potential but still need some work. The diversity of options you find in these devices is what will remain attractive to customers.
Anything you would like to add?
I hope programmers will give PPL a try, join us at http://www.arianesoft.ca/forum.php. We are very dedicated to our products.
