Re: thoughts on gtk, after Hexsweeper

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Vladimir Vukicevic <vladimir helixcode com> writes:

> Owen Taylor wrote:
> 
> >   For compiled languages, the field is slimmer; the Ada
> >   bindings are will-maintained, but, ugh, Ada...  I'd like
> >   to see a nice set of native Java bindings that work with gcj.
> 
> Okay, I gotta ask.. why "ugh, Ada"? It's a much cleaner language for
> doing Gtk (and soon Gnome) apps than C or C++; it's a clean language overall
> (yes, the syntax is a bit on the verbose side, but I would argue that that
> tends to improve readability), and interfaces very well to C (and C++).
> Plus, it has a well-maintained compiler that will probably be included in
> the core gcc distribution soon (which won't happen with gcj in the near future)..
> 
> I don't want to start a language war, I'm just curious as to what the arguments
> are against Ada. (I'm considering starting a personal project in Ada using
> Gtk/Gnome/Bonobo in the near future.)

There is nothing _wrong_ with Ada from my perspective; I've just
never liked what I've seen about it very much:

 - The syntax is distinctly inelegant - it manages to look both
   overpunctuated and oververbose

 - The type system is rather non-standard in terminology and features,
   and a bit limited; as far as I know it has no concept of interfaces
   (or multiple inheritance). Types aren't first-class objects.

 - The user base (especially in the open source world) is quite
   small, so I wouldn't expect a lot of contributions on a project
   I started in Ada.

But that doesn't mean that it is a bad language, just one that
doesn't appeal to me much.

Regards,
                                        Owen