Re: Time to heat up the new module discussion

[Alvaro Lopez Ortega <alvaro 0x50 org>]

Ben Maurer wrote:

> Mono will *not* be taking resources from the current GNOME
> community. Even if there is on occasion, a but in Mono that needs to
> be fixed, it seems that this is a net win given the increased
> development speed. I'm sure Joe Shaw, Aaron Bockover, and Larry
> Ewing (among many others) would attest to the benefit which Mono has
> provided as they developed applications.

  Let's be sincere.  Mono does not provide more benefits than what
  Java has been providing since more than a decade.. and we have not
  used it. Nobody joint the GCJ or Classpath library effort, and
  basically nobody cared about it.

  How many Desktop Java based applications has you used in the last
  few years?  Ok, and now, think again in all those benefits that Mono
  is supposed to bring to us.

>>> It makes increasingly less sense to write applications in C. If
>>> you look at where the interesting and innovative development has
>>> been in terms of applications in GNOME, virtually zero of them are
>>> C apps. They're all either Python or Mono.  This isn't a
>>> coincidence.  >> For me the problem is not the language, but the
>>> addition framework.
>
> So, given the choice of:
>
> 	- "virtually zero...interesting and innovative development" or
> 	- Two frameworks
>
> You are suggesting less innovative development? There is absolutely
> nothing suggesting that over the next 5 years, C applications will
> become easier to develop. On the other hand, substantial
> improvements in managed languages (such as generics, and the many
> enhancements coming in C# 3.0).

  Think of another desktop, choose the one you want.. let's say KDE:
  it's one framework, one desktop and innovative applications.  So,
  yeah, rather than something strange, it's the usual business for
  everybody else.

>> Does it make sense to you to use have three or four different DOM
>> parsers in memory at the same time? (libxml2, python, mono and java
>> for example).
>
> First, java is not under consideration at this point. Let's not
> cloud the discussion with off-topic issues. Currently, python and
> mono are where the innovation that Joe has been talking about is
> happening.

  Yeah, we are arguing about different things. Actually, you worry
  about pushing for Mono, and I'm worrying about stopping any new
  dependency for the GNOME framework on a third party one.

  The Mono case is exactly the same as the Python or the Java one; and
  from my point of view all them carry the same set of problems to
  GNOME: Huge dependencies, resource wasting, and the bast amount of
  APIs in which the applications will be based and that are controlled
  by somebody else (API may change, ABI may be broken, etc).

  By the way, I have no idea.. I'm just wondering.. Isn't the Mono
  Class libraries bigger than the GNOME ones.  Wouldn't it look weird
  to depend on a secondary framework bigger than itself?

-- 
Greetings, alo.
http://www.alobbs.com