Eiffel as a Gnome Development Language ?

Thomas Delaet writes " This article is a short evaluation of Eiffel as a language for developing the core gnome desktop platform. Last month, there has been a heavy debate about a successor for C/C++ as the language of choice for developing the core gnome desktop components in. The debate has mostly focussed around C#/Mono and Java. This article tries to summarize the different requirements for a gnome development language and shows how Eiffel fits in these criteria."

Comments

Pointless

[m00nun1t]

I haven't been watching the debate, but surely a top concern is developer pool? C# and Java are both widely used languages, Eiffel is rarely (although not never) seen outside academia. Surely a large OSS project can't afford to be alienating such a large % of the developer community? There is little incentive to learn Eiffel either - even if you don't know C#/Java, learning them will probably increasing your chances of getting more $ at your day gig, but Eiffel?

Re:Pointless

[AKAImBatman]

I think that many parties have been using the recent news from Sun as an excuse to attempt to drive wedges in the developer community. Many academics hate Java for it being a successful, but very real world language. They would much rather see a more "elegant" language become popular, all while ignoring the realities of development that Java addresses.

Re:Pointless

[BasilBrush]

If you RFRA you'd see it compiles to C, not C++.

And anyway, C++ originally produced C code. C originally compiled to assembler. And assembler obviously produces machine code. So none of these languages have anything over the languages that preceded them, and indeed hand produced machine code "other than another layer of abstraction and a longer compile time", right?

Re:Pointless

[KingOfBLASH]

I haven't been watching the debate, but surely a top concern is developer pool?

I program for a living, and I really don't think a new language will be a problem. I have had to learn lots of new languages for projects at work (That's how I learned LISP, Java, Perl, Python, and PHP). Generally speaking, it's not that hard to pick up on a new language. I'll spend a couple of hours learning the basics of the syntax, then I'll start writing some code, and over a week or two I'll get competent with a language.

Really, most languages aren't that hard to learn. Even LISP, which was out of this world compared with anything I knew before. First I learned that everything in LISP is a List, then that a list is representated by objects in ()s. Then I learned that if you don't have any punctuation to show that the elements of the list are a string, then it's either a function or a symbol (the LISP equivalent of a variable)

Then code like this becomes readable:

(print "hello world!")

If you were following along, you will probably see that we have 1 list, or 2 elements, the first being a function, the second being the string to be used by the function. See, it wasn't that hard, was it? It's really easy for a developer to learn a new language. It takes time, yes, but it's easy

Re:Pointless

[Doomdark]

Yeah, a "real world" language that will only let you do a select-case on an int.

Yeah, as opposed to other real world languages such as C and C++.

Yes, C# allows using syntactic sugar, to do "switch of Strings". Other than that, it's mostly just scripting languages that allow it; mostly because most scripting language have no static typing.

I must admit this is amongst funniest "proofs" of "why java sucks".

Re:Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

> Many academics hate Java for it being a successful, but very real world language.

I am an academic. I dislike Java. But I don't dislike Java *because* I'm an academic. I dislike it because it's an irritating language to code in; because the libraries are bloated; because it uses an order of magnitude more memory than it should; because Java applications all look horrible, and typically are even worse to use than they look; because Sun want to lock you into their weird dream. etc etc.

Putting my academic hat on for a moment and looking at what was known about OO languages, Java would have been a merely OK language in the mid 80's if it had existed then. In the 90's frankly it was past its sell by date, and in the year 2004 it's a joke.

A static type system that's a joke (at least there's going to be a weak-ish generics system in JDK 1.5, but there are other horrors too fundamental to change). A horrible mess between builtin and user types. No modules (classes and static methods do not a module make). Brain damaged name spaces (ever tried "import a.b.c" and then use "c.d"? No, why not do "import a.b.c.*" instead and polute everything!). etc etc. None of these help problems aid development.

If I a non-realist academic, so be it. Your coding reality is the 1970's. My coding reality is the 90's (there being no good imperative language for the year 2004 yet). Last time I checked my coding environment addressed a lot of realities, although I admit it balks at big collars and kipper ties. So be it.

Re:Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

Symbols are not the Lisp equivalent of a variable. Since you are peddling such non-sense I wonder if you even know Lisp.

Re:Pointless

[Chandon Seldon]

What I want to know, is what market place need does Java meet that isn't better met by Python or C++...?

A new hot topic?

[GnuVince]

Is "what is GNOME's next language going to be" becoming a hot topic? You have people saying they should stick with C for all purposes, others saying that every user application should be in C++ or C# or Java or Eiffel. Next thing you'll know, people will be suggesting Haskell.

I do believe a new language should be used for user applications, but I don't see Eiffel as a contender for a simple reason: syntax. People say they don't care about syntax, but they do. How do you explain the success of Java and C# if not for their C-like syntax? This is why I believe Mono/C# has the biggest chance of winning (also consider the fact that GNOME's big boys (de Icaza, Friedman) are Mono core developpers)

A requirement he missed

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a language that people actually know?

C'mon, really, how many people know Eiffel as compared to Java or C#? Really?

Re:A requirement he missed

[Daniel Dvorkin]

How about a language that people actually know?

C'mon, really, how many people know Eiffel as compared to Java or C#? Really?

Well, of course, taking that attitude to its extreme, no new language would ever catch on, and we'd all be coding in ... I don't know, maybe the original FORTRAN or ALGOL 60, maybe machine code for whatever the most popular processor would be (and it wouldn't necessarily be x86, since everyone would have wanted to stick with "an architecture that people actually know.") New languages that offer an obvious and dramatic improvement over anything else that's available for the task at hand* ought to be adopted for widespread and long-term use.

That being said, of course there is a cost involved in adopting an obscure language, and it has to be measured against whatever benefits the language offers. This is particularly true for large projects. I may choose to develop one-off software of which I expect to maintain personal control for its entire life cycle in Erlang or Ruby or Dylan, but if I'm running a big project with lots of contributors, I owe it to developers and end users to weigh the costs and benefits carefully.

* As FORTRAN, and COBOL, and yes, damn it, C, all did. C++, maybe. We'll have to wait another decade or so to be sure about Perl, and another two to be sure about Java and PHP and Python, and longer than that for C#. I take the long view.

OTOH

[jabber01]

Project requirements often dictate the choice of language.

A developer who knows only one language is not a developer, but a one trick pony; a single-purpose tool that is easily replaced with a cheaper, off-shore alternative, for example.

Learning the syntax of a new language should not be a significant challenge to an experienced, talented developer. And, it is experienced, talented developers who should be sought for this project. People who know (language X) and can not adapt to new requirements are not likely to contribute anything innovative, new, or original.

All that said, I don't know Eiffel, nor the particular requirements of the Gnome desktop. If a more popular language fits the bill, great, that's the language that should be used. However, if Eiffel offers particular advantaged, through inherent features not forthcoming in something like C++ or Java, then guess what? A decent developer will eat a book or two over the course of a couple of weeks, and hit the ground running.

Re:OTOH

[Covener]

Learning the syntax of a new language should not be a significant challenge to an experienced, talented developer

That would be great if we were porting 20 line ruby scripts to eiffel, but there's more to developing a language than syntax

Re:OTOH

[Anonymous Coward]

"Learning the syntax of a new language should not be a significant challenge to an experienced, talented developer. And, it is experienced, talented developers who should be sought for this project. People who know (language X) and can not adapt to new requirements are not likely to contribute anything innovative, new, or original."

You oversimplify the complexities of becomeing a *proficient* programmer. While its true that understanding things like object types, polymorphism, encapsulation, etc., are important for any programmer, to become a proficient programmer you have to know how things are implemented. For example, which is better, an array of wchar_t's, a vector of wchar_t's or a string class in C++? Well it depends on the size of what you are going to play with and what operations you plan to do. Or how about passing references vice pointers vice the objects themselves? To a non-C++ programmer, passing the objects would probably sound the best but that would lead to excessive construction/destruction. Passing pointers would sound fast to some, but dereferencing pointers takes up processor time compared to using a reference. Of course, using the reference pretty much requires your object to be constructed in the heap. I hope these arguments make it clear why I would hardly expect a Java or VC, etc. programmer to understand the intracies of C++ (as one example). His/her code would (just like newcomers to C++) have tons of memory leaks, bottlenecks in processor usage, and various security errors as they use thier C knowledge (everyone knows C right?) to survive a short time in a C++ development process.

My point: You can't become a proficient programmer unless you know how your compiler is implemented. This requires time and experience (contrary to what most CS professors will say). Knowing basic CS concepts that are applicable to any language only lets you open the front door.

Re:OTOH

[|_uke]

Mind you, the world of C/C++ can be a lot more complex than a lot of other language. Things like learning how to deal with pointers and the most efficient way to utilize objects in C++ is something a developer learns with use. (A more real world example than yours would be: do you use virtual methods and inheritance, or Polymorphism with templates?)

There is a lot more to C/C++ than just pointers and etc. And even further, many of the patterns, ideas, and practices can all be used across different languages.

Odds are, the developer who can program in C++, Ruby, Java, Python, Smalltalk and (insert your fav language here)... will have a stronger knowledge of programming practices and syntax concepts, which will let him/her program in EVERY language more efficiently.

Even further. Once the programmer feels comfortable in programming for a wide range of languages and syntaxes, he/she will generally have a lot shorter learning curve when picking up a new language.

After a point, learning a new language is less about learning that languages syntax and specialized sugar, and more about learning what kind of new programming practices that language has to give you.

Probably the largest advantage to knowing multiple languages... is that you have a better understand to which language is the best tool for the job.

I'm not going to use C++ to develop my web application. I am probably going to use a language with stronger web development support. And while I might use C++ for developing the core components of a game, odds are I am going to use a language like python for scripting those components. Especially with the VERY nice python integration that the BOOST library provides.

On the same note, I'm probably going to lean away from C++ for developing a desktop application. (Especially applications which don't have large hungry loops.. and even then, I might just use C or C++ for just the intensive part)... I'm probably going to use Ruby or Python. (Ruby if I can find good enough bindings for what I need, python if I can't.)

Even further... for small unix scripts, I will probably use BASH + awk/sed/etc (and it will generally be typed into the shell, instead of saved to a file). But for larger scripts... I am going to use python, ruby or perl depending on what kind of library support I need. Obviously, if my script needs to cover a very wide range of territories... I will probably use perl... But if my script is mostly self contained, I much prefer ruby.

The Langauge should be up to the Developer ...

[mlk]

... Of the App. Make a good API, with clean cross-language compatabity, and let the app dev. choice a language that suites the application that [s]he is writing.

Re:The Langauge should be up to the Developer ...

[Webmonger]

Yeah. We're not talking about the app, though, are we? We're talking about the language the API is implemented in.

Laziness will always dominate software development

[l33t-gu3lph1t3]

Look at the most popular current languages:

for "real" programming, we have C and C++. Java really hasn't made much of an inroads (most of its penetration is with compsci students), C# has barely made any impact at all, and that seems to be limited by those developers who are tied to the Windows platform and need to generate next-gen windows apps. Perl's been around for a long time and, although arguably the ugliest damn language in common usage today, is invaluable for website programming.

Considering the advanced features of languages like Java, C#, and hell, even Python, why, do you think, that their update and adoption hasn't been that rapid? You'd figure that if C and C++, with all their quirks, are so difficult to develop with, and time consuming, etc, that developers would jump on these new languages.

Here's what I believe is the biggest reason they don't: they're lazy. It doesn't matter if a language is hard to work with and has difficult syntax. If the developer knows it inside and out, that developer will prefer to use the older, less sophisticated language, regardless of any benefits the new one offers.

Less Talk, More Do

[UnderScan]

GTK/GNOME is accessible to many users and developers (AS IS) via C/C++/python/perl/ and I am sure there are others I am leaving out.
Why not Eiffel? How about why Eiffel at all? I have never seen Eiffel outside of my CS 101 & CS 102 courses. Seriously, go out and ask other developers what they know or what they have heard of. Chances are people have not heard of Eiffel. Doesn't the GNOME developers want to reach as many developers as possible? The FLOSS idea is that a user may become interested enough to then take a peek at the code. This peek may pique their interests and may eventually become a developer themselves. Doesn't GNOME want as many regular users to become power users to maybe become developers. So what if Eiffel can be compiled to C? Why have another layer of abstraction thus obscuring the picture.

More Do, Less Talk.
If the GNOME developers want more users, want more power users, want more small time developers, then these people have to get interested in the project/platform and must be guided and learn the ropes, or in this case the API. They need to get underneath the hood and understand how it works. IMHO, education, tutorials and documentation would be a great place to start.

Re:"Blue is the color of my Windows screen"

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think they're more painful than your jokes?

Legislating nature

[beforewisdom]

A lot of people have already made the EXCELLENT point how it would be smarter to choose a language already known by many people.

I agree.

Legislating an offical language will not make people learn that language.

Look at GNU. They made Scheme the "official scripting language" for GNU/free(dom) software.

How many people do you see falling over themselves to learn LISP?

Learning a language......and keeping it learned...takes a significant investment in time.

Many of us have day jobs, famlies, lives etc.

Why not do GNU/Gnome and the developers they want to attract a favor?

Make the official language something would be developers can reap a double return on their educational/time investments?

Make it a language they can take back with them to their jobs.

Steve

Re:Legislating nature

[voodoo1man]

Why not do GNU/Gnome and the developers they want to attract a favor? ... Make it a language they can take back with them to their jobs.

Between the .com orgy and subsequent bust and lessons (not) learned, and the overwhelming successes of Free Software and the Java/C++/PL/1 human wave "software engineering," there won't be any (programming) jobs to go back to unless you're in India or the Philippines. Quite frankly I'd be glad for that. Ship all the monkey work overseas (we are supposed to be living in the age of automation innovation productivity growth, after all!), and let the hobbyists use whatever language they want. Many people forget that the interactive computer was invented by a bunch of crazies, and that the PC industry was started by a bunch of crazy hobbyists. They didn't need or want the shit that businesses love to shovel onto their customers, or right now you'd be punching COBOL on a cardboard IBM card.

A really stupid question

[beforewisdom]

I have a really stupid question to ask. Are the people who control Gnome even considering moving it to a new language? Steve

That's what they currently do

[Chuck Chunder]

However there are increasing signs that various contributers, most notably Novell at the moment, are looking to contribute things to GNOME core that are written in higher level languages.

And there's where the BFD lies. Do you refuse entry to potentially cool technologies because they add another dependency to the platform and/or have a bit more political baggage than C?

C++ is probably out as a choice

[beforewisdom]

C++ is probably out as a choice to migrate gnome into.

A desktop written in C++? What would be the point, KDE is already doing it.

Steve

Re:Laziness will always dominate software developm

[cxvx]

for "real" programming, we have C and C++. Java really hasn't made much of an inroads (most of its penetration is with compsci students), C# has barely made any impact at all, and that seems to be limited by those developers who are tied to the Windows platform and need to generate next-gen windows apps. Perl's been around for a long time and, although arguably the ugliest damn language in common usage today, is invaluable for website programming.

Exactly, that's why there are only 11731 Java projects registered at Sourceforge, which is nothing compared to the 13174 C and 13225 C++ projects. That only makes it the 3rd most popular language for opensource projects. It's just laughable.

And no serious business applications could be written in Java, as we can see by the lack of things like application- and webservers for Java. It also barely has webservices support. If only that J2EE thingy could catch on, Java might have a chance. How could anyone write serious applications with it outside of academia?

Proof of Concept?

[Gactaculon]

Considering how much inertia is behind C in the developer community as a whole, just talking about all these modern language alternatives is going to get absolutely nowhere unless some of these language proponents actually get together and code "proof of concept" desktop systems and Gnome tools to show that their alternative actually _works_.

If there were a desktop environment along the scale of XFCE or even Blackbox that was actually coded in Eiffel or C# and could be shown to actually be easier to develop for and less error-prone than a C equivalent, then there might be some converts... but someone needs to tackle the implementation problems first before trying to move such a massive program into a totally new environment.

How About Good C Documentation?

[mrcparker]

That would be a start. Looking at developer.gnome.org I see a whole lot of unfinished API docs and tutorials from years ago. Bonobo - the component system nobody really seems to use - is hardly documented at all.

Also, finish up Anjuta and make it pluggable so that it is easy to add language support. Make it easy to develop in other languages, and the dominant alternative language will rise to the top.

Re:Laziness will always dominate software developm

[hak1du]

Look at the most popular current languages: for "real" programming, we have C and C++

Do you have any data to back that up? I would guess that the largest number of programmers write in something like Basic (mostly VisualBasic), most cycles are spent on interpreted languages, and most LOC are probably still in COBOL.

You'd figure that if C and C++, with all their quirks, are so difficult to develop with, and time consuming, etc, that developers would jump on these new languages.

C and C++ aren't necessarily difficult to develop with, they are, however, difficult to develop with correctly. So, lots of C/C++ code gets written, but almost all of it crashes with regularity and has security problems.

C/C++?

[matusa]

One thing that I am sure has enraged many is the lumping of C and C++ together. I programmed primarily in C for about 5 years, and a couple months back learned C++ and now use that as my primary language.

I used to write code in gtk+, and it was quite painful. Function calls look ugly, you are casting things non stop, and constantly finding gross ways to wrap data into a void * which you pass with signals.

I've been writing apps with gtkmm lately and it is practically a sexual experience in comparison. I can write much cleaner apps, and do so much more quickly.

I don't mean to appear elitist, but anyone saying C/C++, and furthermore that they are both finished, sounds like someone who hasn't really used C++. And no I don't mean writing an app with methods instead of global functions, new/delete instead of malloc()/free(), and replacing char * with std::string (in C++ you use char * all the time! std::string is another entity altogether); no no no I mean using C++ paradigms (I'm _not_ talking about OO--C++ has a plethora of interesting methodologies which result in extremely fast and safe code (we're not just throwing exceptions and building abstract class heirarchies every time we want to move a bit!)).

What is important about C++'s heritage of C is _not_ the shared syntax--it's the fact that you can still figure out your overhead basically exactly (as well as you can in C, at least). But the rest is drastically altered. Go to boost.org to see what I'm talking about.

Note that this is not an anti-C post--that would be ridiculous as not only do I love C but furthermore there are great gtk+ apps (gimp for example--gnome is a bloated mess and doesn't really count IMHO!).

Remember: the rallying cry of OSS is 'show me the code'. If you think you have a nicer way to code, make it and then publicize. I'll stick to gtkmm for now, and recommend others take a look at it.

Are you kidding?

[Isldeur]

This article is a short evaluation of Eiffel as a language for developing the core gnome desktop platform.

I think Gnome has other things it needs to focus on than swapping around foundations again.

Afterall, is Gnome attempting to be useful or just a developers' theoretical playground?

Calm down, it's just a UI library/window manager

[iamacat]

Don't try to make it into the next language/operating system/computing platform. You talked to RMS and other Emacs people way too much. Why should people learn a new language just to write a new file picker to replace your unspeakable abdomination (that may be gone now - didn't follow the news from my OSX cave)?

Gnome should be written using generally available and well-known languages - like C++ and maybe Java if any of the free VMs are usable. If you want to replace C++, start a separate project and convince people to use it on its own merits. You might have to do lots more work than just writting code - publish textbooks, go to standards comeetes, run a website with developer forums - but Perl and Python also suggest that a small potato can succeed with the right stuff.

Then if your language project takes off on your own right, you might consider switching the core development of GNOME. But don't ask people to buy your car just because they want to listen to it's radio player.

Eiffel Wrappger Generator

[WeiszNet]

One thing the article does not mention is that there is even an Eiffel Wrapper Generator. A tool which autmates much of the task when writing Eiffel bindings for C libraries.

If Eiffel were indeed to be used for a project such as Gnome, such a tool could greatly reduce the amount of work needed to access all of the existing Gnome libraries, which are AFAIK all in written in C.

EWG even comes with GTK 2.x bindings contained as an example.

PS: The above is a shameless plug, I am the main developer of EWG (;

No, in fact people claiming a move are full of BS

[0x0d0a]

Are the people who control Gnome even considering moving it to a new language?

No, but it makes good fodder around Slashdot, mostly among anti-MS advocates who want something to get riled up about and among a couple of vocal KDE trolls, so several rather misleading stories have slipped their way in. Miguel has been saying for something like two years now that GNOME is not going to be moved to .NET, and that the people claiming it are full of it. Naturally, once a story gets rolling, people happily continue to propagate horseshit.

Here are a few choice quotes from Miguel, the guy doing Mono who also happens to work on GNOME:

The short story is: rewriting code does not pay off, and I agree with the thesis of the article. Rewriting GNOME in C# with the CLR would be a very bad idea, if not the worst possible idea ever.

GNOME is not adopting Mono or .NET as an implementation technology. The headline from the Register is misleading, for a number of reasons:

* The headline does not reflect any statements I made on the interview (if you read the interview you will notice this).

* The only future plans that have been approved by the GNOME team (which has 11 voting members on its board) are found here:
http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/

* I am not the GNOME foundation or control GNOME like Linus controls his kernel, I am just its founder and a contributor.

* GNOME is not built by an individual, its built by a team of roughly 500 contributors in many areas.

* Decisions in the GNOME world are done by active contributors and module maintainers. I have given
my maintainership status on every module I maintained to other members of the GNOME team as I got more involved with Ximian and later on with Mono.

So effectively I have no "maintainer" control.

and

GNOME had always tried to have a good support for multiple programming languages, because we realize that no matter how much we loved C as a programming language, there was a large crowd of people out there that would like to use the GNOME libraries from their favorite programming language, which might not necessarily be C.

This strategy has paid off very well. There are healthy and striving Python, Perl, Guile and Ada communities out there that use the Gtk+ and Gnome bindings to build applications. From rapid prototyping to robust applications: we wanted to empower developers.

The actual scope of .NET interest:

After much researching and debating, we decided that a couple of developers at Ximian will join me in working on a free implementation of these specifications. [.NET/Mono]

This means that there are a few developers who *also* happen to work on GNOME that work on Mono. Guess what? There are people that work on KDE that work on Java -- that certainly does not mean that "KDE is moving to Java". A couple of Ximian developers working on .NET and GNOME support for .NET is akin to a random KDE-related company (like The Kompany) working on a particular application. Miguel's *only goal* is to have an environment for Ximian to develop future applications for. That means that Ximian may produce an application or two written in C#. It is even possible that such an application could become a core GNOME application.

Miguel has stated in the past that he is dubious about doing rewriting even GNOME-based applications maintained by Ximian -- primarily Evolution. I just can't understand why people have so much problem getting this into their skulls.

I am not sure what people told Richard Stallman about my plans. Given the confusion surrounding .NET, it is very possible that people were asking `Miguel wants to depend on Passport' or something just as bad as that.

My only i

Re:performance is ALWAYS open for debate

[TheRaven64]

I wonder if you've ever heard of a little thing called the Church Turing Thesis? It's one of the founding principles of computer science. It basically says that any language which meets a small number of conditions can express any algorithm. Since both Java and C are Turing-Complete languages (ones which meet these conditions) any algorithm that can be expressed in one can be expressed in the other.

Why change?

[Uerige]

Why would they want to switch to another language, which some developers might not like at all, rewriting every core gnome app? Sounds like they're overdoing something (not sure what exactly). Why does it need to be one language for everything anyway? They could have applications written in nearly every language, because the bindings exist. Or limit it to some, like, C, C++, C#, java, python. Anyone care to explain?

Re:You are missing the point

[jarich]

No, you have missed the point.

Java doesn't cost you a dime. There are multiple implementations... one from Sun, another from IBM, Blackdown, HP, etc.

What you mean is that Java, unlike Linux distros, has a single maintainer and hasn't allowed the language to be fragmented.

Do you realize why most companies won't write apps for Linux? No profit. They have to port to Redhat, Debian, Suse... yes, the differences are minor to a guru, but each is different. Each has a different installation/upgrade mechanism, etc.

Windows is a solid, controlled platform. If Linux had a similar driver, it would wipe Windows off the planet... of course, it probably wouldn't have made it to where it is at... and it will probably ~still~ wipe Windows off the planet! :) It's just taking longer this way.

My point being, when you say Java is not "free", what you really means that you don't like Sun retaining control of the spec. It's not free enough to suit you (even though it costs no money, that's not "free"), so you say it's not free and compare it to MS's C#. Hogwash.

You already have a free, cross platform, enterprise capable language. It's called Java (and J2EE). Use it or continue to watch MS roll over the community.

Re:Python

[Eric Moss]

Why, yes! That's a great idea. Here's why:

[1] simple, uniform syntax. Having programmed for $$ in C, Objective-C, Perl and Eiffel, it took me a while to get used to s-expressions, but once I did, I learned new ways of thinking about programs as data that can be manipulated. Now my old friends (ObjC, etc) seem clumsy by comparison.

[2] Common Lisp can be interpreted for fast prototypes, compiled for speed, and mixed -- core code compiled, and scripts that seemlessly interact with the core.

[3] It's dynamic. Design targets evolve quickly, and statically typed languages make one waste time deciding if a value should be a float or int or whatever, and re-writing if they didn't guess the future correctly. Once a type can be fixed, a simple declaration allows the compiler to optimize. Clean and quick.

[4] Common Lisp has macros far beyond the C-family, which makes for code that writes code in a seamless pre-processing stage. Macros are unbelievably powerful, and are possible a result of the syntax of s-expressions.

[5] Common Lisp is a multi-paradigm language, rather than a "one trick pony". It is object-oriented via CLOS, and more powerfully so than C++/Java/Eiffel. It has multimethods that capture more object paradigms. It is functional when you want that. It can be made declarative by writing a mini-language (e.g. Prolog) via the macro system, and procedural and reflective and whatever else you want. All with one simple syntax, though you can even alter that if you want.

[6] Common Lisp is fast -- it writes fast, builds fast, and even compiles to good machine code.

Do you know any other languages?

[Xtifr]

Do you know any other languages besides C/C++? I have over 15 years of C, and over 5 of C++, and I strongly disagree with you. They are not different languages. But then, I also have at least a passing acquaintance with Lisp/Scheme, Forth, Python, Tcl, Eiffel, Smalltalk, Haskell, Fortran, Pascal, Ada, PL/1, Prolog and SNOBOL. Compared to most of these, C and C++ (and Objective-C) are identical!

(Java and Perl, which I didn't list above, I would count as being in the same family as C/C++, although I suppose they are, technically, different languages.)

Yes, I've used boost and STL and such, and yes, it's a completely different style of programming from C. That still doesn't make it a new language. It's simply been enhanced to allow some new "paradigms". (And they're programming paradigms, not "C++ paradigms".) But I saw the same sorts of things happen back in the stone age, when macros were introduced to assembly language. Didn't mean I wasn't programming in assembler.

Re:Objective-C?

[gidds]

GC may be for the lazy. But it's also for those who write large, complex systems and recognise that manual memory management can take an awful lot of work to get right, often causes subtle bugs that are a nightmare to find, and that their time is better spend elsewhere.

And, perhaps more importantly, it's for those who want to run apps written by people they don't trust to get the memory management perfect. Which, judging from all the memory leaks we see, is a fairly large number of them...

These days we don't expect programmers write directly to the file system; we have far more powerful and robust file system managers to do it for them. We don't let them do everything as the superuser; we have privilege managers to take care of that. So why do we expect them to do their own memory management?

Syntax and realpolitik

[Blackheart2]

I love O'CAML, but its syntax is too tricky for mainstream programmers

Really, the world is better off without the programs these people might write. A person who cannot grasp a context-free grammar is a person who cannot write a useful, working, non-trivial application.

Furthermore, the people who complain endlessly about syntax are in large part also the people who have not clue one about what really distinguishes one programming language from another, or, indeed, even what a programming language is. Hence all the ignorant remarks that language A is better than language B because it has a bigger library (a library is not part of a language), or because A is dynamically typed (static typing subsumes dynamic typing), or because A is interpreted or not (interpretation is a property of an implementation, not a specification).

Such people do not deserve a say in what syntax---much less language---they use, because they aren't informed enough to make a good choice.

Now, I am an informed programmer, and I do think I deserve a say. But I will tell you that, though I am not a big fan of OCaml's syntax, C-like syntax or LISP-like syntax, I will gladly use any of them if I need to, because I know that the importance of semantics dominates that of syntax, and because I know that learning a new syntax is the easiest part of learning a new language.

Arguing about syntax is like picking a political candidate because he looks attractive: irrelevant. Do you want an ignoramus like that to decide who governs you? Do they even deserve voting rights? There really is no point: you might just as well just thrown some random noise into the poll records, or automatically pick a candidate for these people based on whether they prefer Britney Spears over Avril Lavigne. Different method, same result.