Re: Installing Seed extensions

[Xan Lopez <xan gnome org>]

2009/9/30 Josselin Mouette <joss debian org>:
> Le mercredi 30 septembre 2009 à 06:53 +0100, Magnus Therning a écrit :
>> Even though I have myself felt the pain of trying to translate my Python
>> extension to Seed, I do feel that in the long run it's the right thing to drop
>> Python.  Personally I don't feel Javascript is a very good language
>> technically, but it's a strong contender mostly because it's used in other
>> browsers (especially FF).
>
> “Others do it this way” sounds like a very poor reason for a language
> choice. If you look at the actual merits, there’s very little reason to
> use JavaScript. The only thing where JS wins is the coolness factor, and
> it doesn’t last as long as other qualities. I feel personally that a JS
> developer is more likely to spend his time on writing a Mozilla
> extension rather than an Epiphany one. At the same time, switching to a
> poor language is scaring away the community of Python developers who was
> developing extensions for Epiphany.

That's not the only reason, although it's a very good one. JavaScript
is a pretty decent language (better than Python in some important
aspects IMHO, like non-broken closures), does not come with its own
platform so it can be more easily integrated with the GNOME libraries,
and due to its popularity it's one of the most actively developed and
researched languages in existence (I believe it's already faster than
Python in modern stable implementations, for example).

And on top of all that, JavaScript will be used for core components in
GNOME 3, like the shell, so I think that it makes a lot of sense to go
with the flow and select it as the main language for scripting the
GNOME browser.

Xan