Re: Where we stand in regard to the future platform / desktop technology

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Mon, 2004-03-29 at 10:28, Rui Miguel Seabra wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-03-29 at 10:02 -0500, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> > And don't also forget how very unstable Python is in regards to
> > modules.  A user upgrades Python (say, upgrades their OS?) and *poof*
> > half of everything stops working properly.  You need a copy of every
> > module installed for every version of Python you have (because your apps
> > are generally made in a way that invokes a specific version of Python,
> > again to deal with broken module versioning).
> 
> I didn't know python has that kind of problem. It is a PITA. At least
> during a major version life cicle it should respect ABI/API.

Yes, it's a very big PITA.  To be honest, I'm not sure if *any*
mainstream scripting language handles this properly.  I don't believe
Perl does, at least, and I'm fairly sure Ruby doesn't.  These languages
all generally were designed to be run solo first, with C extensions or
embedding APIs more as an after-thought.

Even looking at C/C++, it's more of an after-thought.  You have to be
very careful to retain ABI compatibility.  Especially in C++, where the
ABI is rather "hidden" by the compiler.  The CLR was designed with this
problem in mind, and does a fairly good job at fixing it, at least
compared to other main-stream attempts to do so.

> 
> Rui
-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.