Re: Revisiting the Gnome Bindings

[danilo gnome org (Danilo Šegan)]

Jamie,

Today at 2:21, Jamie McCracken wrote:

> 1) Easy to program in and has naturally clear syntax and simple
> structure. (that rules out C++)

If that rules out C++, IMO it rules out both Java and C# as well
(we're talking about syntax here, right?).  Though, Java would have
an edge here, because of not-requiring "virtual" keyword (or was it
vice-versa?) — that's a big one for me when it comes to "natural
clearness of syntax" and "simplicity of structure" ;-)

I'm not saying that all of these suck and don't fulfill this
criteria, but rather that Java, C# fulfill it as much as C++ does
(with neglectible error margin), and that it depends on *personal*
views of what you consider clear syntax (for me, anything apart from
assembly and Python is far away from it, though C is close because of
it's resemblance to HL assembly :-).

> 2) Has a damn good IDE with integrated form designer so its child play
> for developers to use. 

This rules everything else basically out, except for maybe
Delphi/Kylix which doesn't use Gtk+ ;-)  I haven't looked at
MonoDevelop, but I doubt it provides useful-enough "integrated form
designer" for Gtk#.

> 5) Is a proven RAD language. (going with the D language might be too
> risky?)

Uhm, nothing left. Unless we're thinking of really adopting Kylix :-)

> I also think time is against us here and waiting another year or two is
> bad - we need to have consensus ASAP so that the next major version of
> Gnome (3) can take advantage of RAD tools long before Longhorn rears its
> ugly head. 

Consensus can't be gotten that easily, because it requires (almost)
half of the community stepping down.  And as with anything in Free
Software, it comes down to mostly emotional issues, so for anything
to happen, it will just have to happen.

Also note that any "decision" taken by "core" Gnome project is not
set in stone: other developers will still use whatever bindings they
see fit, so I still expect more apps to appear in something like
pygtk, than eg. java-gnome, even if we "dedicate" ourselves to it.

We're not time-critical as you're trying to describe, since we can
see more and more apps popping up without us ever prescribing any
single bindings as the best one.  It will certainly take much longer
than "another year or two" for Gnome to switch it's basic
infrastructure to anything other than C.

Just my 2€/100 ;-)

Cheers,
Danilo