Re: official support for more scripting languages in gnome needed

[Vlad Harchev <hvv hippo ru>]

On Mon, 19 Mar 2001, Jeff Waugh wrote:

> 
> <quote who="Ben Ford">
> 
> > You are making the argument for Visual Basic.  Do you remember the
> > proliferation of *very* bad programs when VB hit?  What is the next step?
> > Perl macros in email?
> 
> Visual Basic was very good at one thing: It was an enabling technology. So
> many more people were able to create software (bad or not), and the platform
> was more attractive for it.
> 
> It is disappointing that the language was sub-optimal, and horrendous that
> other related technologies have opened gaping holes in the security of
> Microsoft products.
> 
> The languages recommended here are *very* good languages for large-scale
> development, and also for teaching. They are much better technically than
> Visual Basic, but can offer some of the same appeal.
> 
> Assume that the Gnome Project is not as stupid as Microsoft in terms of
> security, and if you're not comfortable with the assumption, get in there
> and do some auditing.

 I fully agree with this.

 VB is a bad language from design and tecnhology POV, and nobody encourages to
use *VB* for writing gnome programs.. And also, if you, as a user, won't be
satisfied with a quality of some gnome utility written in scripting language,
you will be able to fix it in 2 minutes (if you can), without recompiling,
etc. That was not an option for VB-based programs..
 
 It's a pity that GtkPerl is immature and not yet officially supported. It
would be nice if somebody mentioned the reasons why in which aspects it's
immature - a lot of expert Perl programmers are out there, so it's a pity to
loose such a powerful crew of potential contribnutors.

 As for pushing scripting languages further in gnome project - it would be
nice to reflect this fact on gnome.org, to stress on GUADEC - i.e. spread this
widely. I think everybody will win from this..

> Scripting languages != security problems.
>
> [ You're not giving Free Software the credit it deserves! ]
> 
> - Jeff

 Best regards,
  -Vlad