Re: 3.2: gjs/seed, QML?

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

hi;

On 25 April 2011 12:28, Alberto Mardegan <mardy users sourceforge net> wrote:
> On 04/21/2011 02:12 AM, Colin Walters wrote:
>> == Dynamic Languages in GNOME ==
>>
>> One thing that's worth addressing though (again) is the question "do
>> we need both Python and JavaScript?".
>
> IMHO, no. Which doesn't mean that one of the two must die; but I don't
> see much benefit in spending energy on two language bindings, when at
> the end they are pretty much equivalent when it comes to making a
> programmer's life easier/different.
>
> Javascript doesn't bring any greater advantages to an application
> developer over Python; it's just a different language, with more
> immature bindings.
>
> What would be more beneficial (again IMHO) is to invest our energies on
> something like QML [0].

no, I actually think it would be detrimental to GNOME.

QML is the wrong answer to a badly posed question.

if we want declarative UIs then we shouldn't look further away than a
web rendering engine, HTML5 and JavaScript, and exposing the GNOME
platform through ad hoc JS APIs.

> A GNOME implementation of QML would be simply rocking. :-)

I don't believe it would.

> Over the past few months/years I've seen some blog posts from highly
> skilled and respected developers from the GNOME world who were
> (skeptically) wondering what's so cool about QML, and comparing it with
> introspectable Gtk+/Clutter/Clutterscript/Cluttersmith and/or
> Javascript. Well, if you still think the same, you are off track, by a
> large distance.

forgive me for being blunt, but:

QML is a badly designed JSON-look-alike with JavaScript evaluated on
every right-hand-side definition, and it requires dropping into C++
and Qt if you want to have reasonable performance and decent logic
abstraction to avoid the "write once, throw away immediately after"
syndrome. the only thing going for it is a half-decent IDE that
doesn't make you gouge your eyes out with  rusty spork.

I tried QML, talked to people using it daily, saw real-world usage of
it, and even talked to its creators - and I am constantly amazed how
somebody could ever think that conflating UI description and logic
into the same ad hoc, barely specified language was a good idea.

let's not follow this trainwreck, please.

ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name
B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi/