Re: official support for more scripting languages in gnome needed

[Ben Ford <ben kalifornia com>]

James Henstridge wrote:

> On Sun, 18 Mar 2001, Ben Ford wrote:
>
> > > Why should you care what language a useful tool is written in?  For many
> > > tasks, there is no noticable speed or CPU usage problems when choosing a
> > > scripting language.  Often these languages let the programmer write
> > > shorter programs that are less likely to have bugs in them.  Why is this a
> > > bad thing?
> > >
> > > Do you refuse to play AisleRiot because the game rules are written in
> > > scheme?
> > >
> > > I am not sure I am in favour of rewriting existing applications in python
> > > or perl just for the sake of using a scripting language though.
> >
> > 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?
>
> I hate to tell you, but it is possible to write bad programs in almost any
> language.  If a program written in python is going to be included in a
> GNOME release, then it will have to meet the same quality standards as any
> other program.
>
> I have seen some very good quality GNOME programs written in scripting
> languages and some very bad quality (third party) GNOME programs written
> in C.  Do you have any other problem with these languages other than them
> being easy to use?
>
> James.

I think we are all getting somewhat off the subject.  The post that I originally
replied to proposed making perl, python and lisp *REQUIREMENTS* for gnome.  To me
(and at least one other), that is not an option and if you do so, you will lose
me as a user / developer / distributor / advocate.

Scripting languages have their place.  I don't dispute that.  I use automake as
much as the next guy.  But I don't (and won't) run perl applets.  Maybe one of
them doesn't slow you down that much, but you get two or three of them and it
will.  Already I can't run more than a few applets w/ my PII450 w/ 192 RAM
without seeing a big speed drop.  So it's not the greatest box around, but it's
no slouch.  Do you remember why Linus started coding Linux?  His 386 wasn't
powerful enough to run Minix.  What are we, Microsoft?  What happened to the days
when people were proud of how fast their code executed?  You guys ought to check
out e17 if you want to see fast *and* pretty.

I have an old laptop I am building into a webpad of sorts.  It is a Cyrix PR166
(133Mhz) with 24MB of RAM.  It is dog slow.  But right now I can run Gnome on
it.  I don't have perl installed and I don't have python installed.  Why should
I?  It does two things.  Light web browsing and MP3 playing.  If you make perl
and python requirements, then it will NOT run gnome.  That is all there is to it.

I also build set-top boxes for friends.  They use a Cysix Geode 233Mhz.
Currently they run Gnome.  But no perl.  Why?  Same reason as before, I have no
reason to.  They play MP3s, browse the web and email.  Nothing else.  Have you
forgotten the mantra of secure programming?  Don't run or even install shit you
don't need!  No wonder RedHat's in love with you all!

What this whole discussion was over is whether or not to make perl, python, lisp
and <insert favorite scripting language here> requirements for gnome.  My answer
is no.  HELL NO.

</rant>

-b