Re: Uniformity - programming languages

[Robert Ancell <robert ancell gmail com>]

>> Moving to vala has its merits (sidestep python issues (pygi, python3),
>> faster startup). So I am for porting both python-based games to vala.
>
> Vala's short-term stability scares me but since Robert is taking on the
> responsibility, I'm fine with it.

My experience with Vala has been if you don't use too many features,
then there aren't major problems.  Since the games don't really access
any API outside of glib and GTK+ I think we wont have major issues.

I feel there is a general trend in GNOME towards using Vala as it's
started to prove it's worth over C.  I was very much a Vala sceptic
six month ago.

I'd like to see something like this recommended for GNOME games:
- One static language (Vala)
- One dynamic language (seed?)
- Legacy applications in C with the intention to migrate them to Vala

The later task would be quite feasible for GSOC students/gnome love
tasks.  Producing a Vala app with the exact same behaviour requires
new structure (the games are not too complex, a modern language like
vala is easy to write good structure) and not much more than a
copy-paste of the algorithms.