Re: Should I use gtk-perl or gtk & c for gnome apps ?

[Kalle Vahlman <kalle vahlman gmail com>]

2005/9/9, Rod Butcher <rbutcher hyenainternet com>:
> 
> I'm  looking to develop some gtk-based sysadmin apps, and I'm not sure
> whether to use glade & c or perl-gtk.

My view on this question is that C vs Python vs Perl vs Ruby vs Java
vs Mono vs ... is mostly a question of target audience and preference.

Target audience because using other than C imposes "extra"
requirements on the environment, you can't assume that everyone has
Mono installed for example (although most modern distros have IINM).
Some could say that this is not unlike the library requirements that C
programs have, but mostly those are ignored when this argument is
brought up...

Preference because it as you say, CPU:s run hot these days and the
performance overhead is not really visible anymore. Another thing
generally dismissed is that managing chunks of
memory..errr...programming in C is more prone to weird, hard-to-trace
problems than say Python. So while the amount of bugs most likely will
be the same, Python bugs are by far easier to fix.

However, I do support the idea of writing widgets in C (and I am
writing my little widget set with it), for performance too, but mostly
because that makes it pretty easy to support a multitude of languages
with bindings :) I'm not sure, but I would guess that making a Python
module available in Perl wouldn't really be that straightforward.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

So, as a conclusion, I'd say that

- Writing widget sets with C is good
- Writing apps in interpeted languages (using the widget set) is great
- Neither C nor interpeted languages are vastly superior to the other
in the big picture, both have their ups and downs

-- 
Kalle Vahlman, zuh iki fi