Re: "I've got this great idea!"

["Jason D. Clinton" <me jasonclinton com>]

On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 5:52 PM, Erik Blomqvist
<erikblomqvist3 gmail com> wrote:
> I'm a big fan of C myself, but what's wrong with C++?

It's a pile of incomprehensible shit that even C++ experts don't fully
understand. I have the Stroustrup book on my desk and have a little
place in my heart reserved for the hate it has given me.

> And why should anyone even consider JavaScript anywhere else than on the
> web?

Lights Off is written in JavaScript and Same Gnome's rewrite in
JavaScript will be merged in 2.27. Hopefully during 2.27 the GJS and
Seed JavaScript engines will become interchangeable, but for now, Seed
is the required runtime. And it's precisely that it is available on
the web that makes it an ideal language for GNOME to allow development
in: more developers is a good thing.

> I'm asking partly because I have an idea for a new GNOME game myself, but
> mostly because I'm curious. As far as I know at least one of your games is
> written in C++ and other languages such as Python has also been used.

Gnometris is the only C++ game and it will be converted to C during
2.27. It doesn't use any C++ GNOME bindings, at all. So, it'll be
fairly easy to do so.

We have two Python games: Chess and Sudoku. Unfortunately, we only
have one person that's really good with Python: Robert Ancell. And
while I do not particularly care for Python, personally, maintaining
it has given me the impression that GNOME's Python bindings are
generally lacking. The number of obscure corner-case crashers that
have flooded our in-boxes and made our Bugzilla useless is just
appalling. (We have found a work around for this.)

>Why
> would C or JavaScript be a requirement for this game?

I can't think of anything other languages that would be reasonable to
allow. And no, Vala is not an option: not until GIR is marked stable.