Re: GSoC Proposal: Scripting Framework for Applications

[Colin Walters <walters verbum org>]

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 2:56 PM, Shaneeb Kamran <shaneebster gmail com> wrote:

> The main benefit of supporting multiple languages is more to the users of
> the application than to its developers. Like I mentioned in my previous
> mails, if a user wants to add a feature to his favorite application and he
> knows only a language, say, ruby while the app requires him to write the
> extension in, say, python then the user is stuck: he has to learn a new
> language just to write a small piece of code.

We can't support multiple runtimes per process sanely for a variety of
technical reasons; one of those is that multiple GC'd runtimes break
toggle references useless and lead to memory leaks.  A non-technical
argument against this is that it fragments the developer base,
documentation, etc.

My take is that GNOME apps should pick C + one of JS,Python and move
on with actually writing your app and fixing bugs, making it
compelling, etc.