Re: Why GNOME uses C?

[Toady <toady gscore org>]

On Wed, 2005-06-15 at 18:22 +0400, Peter wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> I also was very interested in this problem. So now, if I understand
> correctly from the previous posts there are two main reasons:
> 1. Historical reasons.
> 2. More portable ABI.

And because there are (were?) more developers who know C programming.

> 
> But what was very strangely for me that there were advices to program for
> gnome in Python or C#. IIRC these languages do not need their
> programs to be compiled (sorry I fogot the right term) to run them. So
> this are the different languages, and if we want fast program (desktop)
> it's better to avoid such languages. Did I miss anything? So why there
> were such advices?

It depends what you want to do. Each language targets something. Being
fast or not has nothing to do with the language (it has to do with its
implementation etc..). 
So, when you run programs written in python, you don't see much
difference regarding the execution time.
When you are adviced to take a language such as Python or C#, that's
simply because it is faster to write desktop applications in general
(you don't have to deal with memory, pointers, ...).

> 
> Should I stop exploration of gtk+ and programming with glade on C and to
> switch on something else?

No, everything is good :) if you are exploring, then keep doing it. Try
to write simple applications in several languages to see the one you
prefer and take it.
And, while you are at it, give us feedback, so that people can read you
from your experience.

> 
> I'm aware about gtkmm, but why nobody advices to use them? How gtkmm is
> related with core gtk+ development? Or gtkmm is completely different
> library?

gtkmm is a binding. It means that it binds to the original library
(written in C). One of the power of the C language, is (to me) that
types are standards and writting glue code gets easy(ier).



Bye,
Toady.