Re: [gnome-love] Re: Revitalising gnome-love

[Ross Golder <ross golder org>]

On พ., 2003-11-12 at 00:04, news optimistic co uk wrote:
> How acceptable is it to use pygtk for a program which you might like to be promoted by GNOME or even 
> included in GNOME? How many bits of GNOME use it? Is it acceptable to combine it with libglade? My Python 
> skills are fairly good, and I like the API.

Please don't. I do understand that people like using scripting languages
and sometimes they allow you to knock up applications fairly easily, but
IMHO I'd hate to see the core GNOME desktop starting to rely on loads of
intrepreted/scripted languages. It would add a huge amount of bloat to
an otherwise elegant design.

The GNU mission statement suggests that all programs should be written
in C. As GNOME is a effectively a kind of GNU subproject, I'd hate that
we start bending the rules in this area (or go too far down that road
that we can't turn back). For example, I noticed some time ago that the
GNUE project now uses Python fairly extensively. I think this is a real
shame, and has unfortunately has put me off using it, as I'd need to
learn yet another language in order to get to grips with it and start
developing/maintaining it. I'll probably eventually have to learn
Python, but I just don't have time right now. In fact, I'd probably
prefer to spend the time re-writing my own GNUE in C.

IMHO, C++ isn't so bad, as the GNU C compiler already works with that
quite well, so it doesn't require too much additional effort on the part
of future developers/maintainers and shouldn't add much bloat to the
code or binaries. Also, if I understand it correctly, converting C++ to
straight C after the event, if required, shouldn't be too hard either.

Scripting languages are great for small non-essential utilities etc that
are outside the scope of the core desktop, but please people, keep it C
wherever possible. Otherwise, I foresee we'll end up starting a
religious war over which is the official GNOME scripting language, and
that'll get even uglier.

Regards,

--
Ross