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

"Blue is the color of my Windows screen"

[tepples]

The Eiffel language may be a good choice for GNOME apps, but wouldn't running a Windows app written in Eiffel 6.5 result in the Blue Da Ba Dee Screen of Death?

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Eiffel is rarely seen IN academia - compsci academia, anyway. Eiffel is marketed strongly at "computing for business" types, you know, the ones who buy into the OO, software engineering hype, and write 30000 line monstrosities where a 12 line shell script would do, then go off and "refactor" for another six months and USD500000 budget to produce...the same thing, sliced slightly differently.

Compscis use stuff like ML and Haskell, while slagging off other compscis who use Common Lisp or Scheme for not having static typing (while the lispers slate the MLers for missing the point because all the interesting lisp programs don't _know_ what types are appropriate ahead of time in their view), and they all slag off the goons using Java to get funding from corporate types.

Re:Pointless

[arvindn]

"Pointless" exactly sums up my reaction as well. I mean, pretty much every modern open source language fits all these criteria. Obviously, a major factor in the choice of language is how familiar it is to existing developers. Apart from C/C++, the most commonly used gnome language is python. So if at all the choice is something other than C#/Java, it would have to be python.

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

[RadGeekAuburn]

a fun tidbit about Eiffel, because one of the teachers at my school loves it: when you compile Eiffel code, it compiles into C++ and then into assembly, so there's nothing Eiffel has over C++ other than another layer of abstraction and a longer compile time.

You might as well argue that there is no reason to use anything other than raw machine code, because after all, that's what everything is ultimately compiled into, so there's nothing that C++ has over machine code "other than another layer of abstraction and a non-zero compile time."

The reason that you don't use raw machine code, of course, is that it's a pain in the ass, and in most cases a completely unnecessary one; not just in the sense that it takes multiple memorized instruction codes just to get anything done, but also in the sense that it makes it much more difficult to understand programs of any size or complexity than it is in a higher-level language, and consequently greatly increases the costs and labor involved in minor details such as testing, debugging, and maintaining. One could (and many have) argued that C++ also has significant deficiencies in these areas, because of non-existence, incomplete or ill-conceived implementations of features such as design-by-contract, exception handling, inheritance, etc.--in which case using a language such as Eiffel to provide a helpful "layer of abstraction" may very well end up producing better code that's more likely to be correct, easier to test, and easier to debug.

Whether Eiffel actually has the virtues often claimed for it, and whether these virtues outweigh its vices compared to other languages, is another question for another day. But the "tidbit" here cuts no ice; it's just irrelevant sniping at a particular compiler implementation.

Re:Pointless

[WeiszNet]

Your point that _just_ another layer of abstraction doesn't introduce anything worthwhile has been answered by other people. (Dude, why don't you program in assembly, or brainfuck, or whatever? :)

For what it's worth, please make a distinction between C++ and C, they are two very different beasts. Two of the most common Eiffel compilers ISE Eiffel and SmartEiffel do compile to C code, not to C++ code. You probably refered to one of those when making your claim that Eiffel compilers generate C++ code (which is a false statement). Also please note that conceptually an Eiffel compiler can generate assembly code as well. In fact VIsual Eiffel does it. And ISE Eiffel does compile to Microsofts .Net byte code as well.

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

[tigersha]

I can ensure you 100% that C does NOT allow you to do a switch on a string and, for that matter, also forces you to use the xx.equals(yy) thing. In fact, in C you use strcmp which is worse.

Besides, there IS a difference in == and .equals. The one compares the CONTENTS of (possibly) TWO strings while the other checks if the strangs are the same string (and works for any object, it checks the reference).

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)

Re:A new hot topic?

[GnuVince]

Oh, I forgot to mention, C# does not alienate Windows developers and independant software vendors, they don't need to learn new languages and new libraries to be productive under Linux. This is another point in favor of C# and against Eiffel

Re:A new hot topic?

[AKAImBatman]

Interestingly enough, the latest versions of Java come with a new Look and Feel for Swing. The GTK+ look and feel hooks into GTK+, and makes your Swing application look and behave just like all your other GTK apps; even if you change your skin! Thus one might argue that Java is a perfectly acceptable GTK+ development language. :-)

Re:A new hot topic?

[boelthorn]

I am really pleased to see a major software development community leaving the C-like realm of programming languages. While C is still nice as assembler substitute, I never could convince me that it is useful for general application development. Same goes more or less for C++/Java, though I do not have much exposure to them myself and will try to keep it that way.

There are really neat languages to successfully code nice programs and all the C-like ones are clearly not belonging into that group. Being a Common Lisp zealot I strongly prefer its multi-paradigm style to anything else for most tasks, but I also see the benefit in using OCaml, Eiffel and other languages with way more abstraction than any C-like language so far manages to convey to the ordinary programmer. Having proper closures, and first-class functions, and a not-limiting OO implementation increases productivity by a order of magnitude.

Ok, but one must face reality: As software developer eventually you will have to code something in say Java, but Lispers have now a real advantage: LINJ
For now I can use most of the expressivness of Common Lisp and still can pretend to hack Java. :-)

Re:A new hot topic?

[Mithrandir]

If the program is written by someone else, then you don't really have an option on changing it without getting into some serious hacking (ie writing a wrapper class for their application that changes the default L&F before starting the real app).

If you want to see what is available on a platform, have a look at the javax.swing.UIManager class and specifically the getInstalledLookAndFeel() method. This will give you a list that you can then drop into a menu, print out to a command line or anything else you care to do. If you're builing an app that is supposed to be cross platform, then specifically setting a L&F is bad design. What you should use is

String name = UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName()
UIManager.setLookAndFeel(name)

In this way you'll always get something that approximates the local widget set look, regardless of whether you are running on Win32, Linux, Solaris or anything else.

Re:A new hot topic?

[koali]

The GTK+ Swing look is quite ugly; it only tracks a few Gnome themes, I think it does not support antialiasing and looks baaaaad. If you want to use it, anyway, check this.

If you want to develop Gnome apps in Java, there are Gnome/GTK bindings for Java.

There is also SWT, but I don't recommend it (it's a lowest common denominator for Win32, Cocoa, GTK and Solaris). Besides, it's selling point is 'cross-platform' compatibility. If you are developing Gnome apps, you shouldn't care much for that (I mean, you are following the HID and using Gnome apis -that's not crossplatform).

Python

[richie2000]

Might as well use Python, then Gnome can use the Zope database for its filesystem, Plone to manage the calendar, document workflow and so on, and it's a sure fit with Gentoo. Well, Gentoo begins with a G, anyway. And portage uses Python. Am I right or am i right? Right!

Eiffel, indeed... What are the reasons for switching and won't it be totally painful to switch language NOW? Maybe the article author has been laid off from Ericsson, I believe they used (use?) Eiffel a lot in-house.

Re:Python

[GnuVince]

No, Ericsson uses Erlang, a functional, concurrent programming language.

Re:Python

[richie2000]

Ah, yes, of course. I knew it was something beginning with an E, though...

I sit corrected and wish to exchange the Interesting and any possible Insightful moderations I got for my original post for a few Funny and an Overrated.

Re:Python

[N1KO]

What do you mean? All three use bytecode interpreters. Which makes them slow and they consume lots of memory. C++ is faster, more popular and bindings for other languages easier to have than with C#/Java.

So if anything were to replace C for the core libs, it would be C++. Honestly, performance on the desktop isn't that great with linux. I'll wait to see if Xorg can make the X server better before I start running everything under Java.

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.

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.

Eiffel is overly verbose

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the problem with languages developped first on paper (Ada being another, extreme). Just use Ocaml.

STL

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the big complaints about the security of C++ come because people have little experience with STL and use their own proprietary container classes. In reality STL has given C++ a new life. C++ can be as security safe as C# or java if a comple of simple programming techniques are used: use the STL object classes--they are fast and safe though they require training to use effectively (Scott Meyers' Effective STL is a good start), use garbage collection or register major components (similar to what Mozilla does) to minimize memory leaks, and use exceptions safely (knowing the effect of what construction and destuction of objects will have when the exception is thrown). There really isn't a need to reduce the number of programmers and eyes by switching to Eifell. Just make sure everyone is trained to operate C++ to its full potential.

performance is ALWAYS open for debate

[l33t-gu3lph1t3]

The fact that the Eiffel compiler can compile to C or java bytecode is quite interesting. Consider their disparity of features:

-C is not object oriented -Strict ANSI C is very limited as compared to platform-specific functions and libraries -C does not have Java's virtual machine features like garbage collection -C is not strongly typed like Java, nor does it perform all the boundary checks that the Java compiler does

I'm not saying that C is a bad language to program with...it's always about the right tool for the right job. I'm just questioning how the compiler can compile/convert? to both C code (is this compiling to C-source, or converting to binaries?) and to Java bytecode (where you don't need things like deconstructors and memory management built into your code) or Java-compatible class files?

Regardless of this, performance issues are almost always a matter of compiler efficiency. If one were to compare the Intel C++ compiler, Borland's, the Mac compiler, gcc, etc, you will have huge performance disparities depending on what platform you compile to, what compiler you use, etc. In my own limited programming experience, the only differences that can be absolutely noted between languages are when the performance differencies are atleast an order of magnitude apart...Like the benchmarks show sometimes, Java can vary wildly between fast and slow, and the own differences between different C++ compilers an be unimpressive.

Re:performance is ALWAYS open for debate

[CRCulver]

-C is not object oriented

No, but certainly libraries like GTK2 allow the programmer to perceive the library as object-oriented. Sure, things are going on deep down, but the level the developer actually sees is pretty OO.

-Strict ANSI C is very limited as compared to platform-specific functions and libraries

Who cares about "strict ANSI C"? The latest ISO C standard came out in 1999.

-C does not have Java's virtual machine features like garbage collection

C is perfectly capable of supporting garbage collection.

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.

Another alternative is D

[HiThere]

Digital Mars D currently runs on Linux and MSWind. It doesn't, AFAIK, run on the Mac yet, but there's no intrinsic problem.

I like Eiffel a lot more than C, but I like D better than Eiffel. D is like C++ that got it right. (Well, it was designed decades later, so that's not too surprising.) D links easily with C code. Much more easily than Eiffel does. D doesn't have the wide variety of implementations that Eiffel does. Eiffel suffers from the problem that each compiler comes with it's own set of libraries. (It also suffers from functions not being overloadable, but that's on purpose. Still, I count it as a definite drawback to require different operators to multiply integers, floats, and I*F and F*I -- all require different operators in Eiffel, that that's just the start of the problem.)

Re:Another alternative is D

[FooBarWidget]

One problem D has is that it has no stable ABI, which could make distributing binaries written in D a pain. Just look at the C++ ABI breakages between GCC 2.95, 2.96, 3.0, 3.1, 3.1.1 and 3.2.

Re:Better learn C#, boys

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Eiffel is a region in Germany :P

Interesting points, but...

[skrysakj]

The person has made very valid points, especially concering politics and "free"dom. But many of the points they made can apply to other languages, such as Ada (easy to read, compiles to C, small syntax set, free compilers, etc..) yet there just aren't enough people using it to make it a good language to move towards.

Re:Better learn C#, boys

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Eiffel is a region in Germany :P

Whereas France is only sometimes a region in Germany.

Eiffel? Bah!

[JanusFury]

Eiffel? Why bother? There is a much better language out there that's already being used heavily on the GNOME platform, along with other platforms like KDE.

What language, you ask?

English!

English is an easy-to-learn and powerful language. A large number of developers already know this language, and there are many tools available to translate it to/from other languages.

English is a robust and mature language, as well. It's been in use for hundreds of years and its capabilities are well-known and understood by many. Try and match that with some ten-year-old language created by hairy UNIX administrators!

Compilers and documentation for English are easy to get a copy of, and many are completely free or very affordable. Almost every college out there offers courses in English.

There are many powerful IDEs available for English - OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, the list goes on.

Unlike languages like Java and French, there is no central committee that says what English can and cannot 'do'. You're free to explore the potential of the language and come up with new instructions and invent new ways to use existing instructions.

I honestly cannot believe that English has been overlooked in this debate. It's a perfect fit for GNOME.

Re:Eiffel? Bah!

[cide1]

You're free to explore the potential of the language and come up with new instructions and invent new ways to use existing instructions.

Strategery?

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

[|_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.

Eiffel would be a inferior choice

[aminorex]

Sather whomps Eiffel on design and openness.
OCAML whomps all of the above on design and codability.

C# would be sheer madness. Java is excusable
because of GCJ, but if you're looking to maintain
code long-term, OCAML will allow you to avoid
spaghetti objects, where aspects are spread over
50 different classes.

Re:Eiffel would be a inferior choice

[hak1du]

Sather whomps Eiffel on design and openness.

Yes, but Sather, unfortunately is pretty much dead. So is another great language, Modula-3.

OCAML whomps all of the above on design and codability.

Not quite. I love O'CAML, but its syntax is too tricky for mainstream programmers and it lacks some important features (foremost, good support for efficient numerical programming).

Java is excusable because of GCJ,

Sun has complete control over what is and what isn't Java (they own the trademark, the specifications, and lots of patents). Gcj isn't Java, and if it were, it would probably violate some of Sun's intellectual property.

C# would be sheer madness.

Why? C# is an open, non-proprietary standard and a fairly decently designed language. Mono is an open source, high-quality implementation of C# with a full completement of open source libraries. Mono and its open source libraries are completely unencumbered by Microsoft or Sun patents, and they are based on APIs OSS developers already know well (Gtk+, Gnome, etc.). (Mono also happens to have a separate set of .NET-compatible libraries but if you are an OSS developer, you shouldn't use those.)

If you are looking for an open language with plenty of open source libraries, an efficient open source implementation, and no legal strings attached, C# is pretty much the only game in town right now.

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.

Objective-C?

[skurken]

How about it? It's good enough for Apple and it's easily integrated with existing C and C++ code.

And personally, it think it's sort of UN*X-ish in it's attitude. The way you can fiddle with messages almost makes you feel like playing with a UN*X-installation as root.

Re:Objective-C?

[pfafrich]

The one thing Iliked about objective C was that it didn't need a manual. The whole things could be described in a few web pages. No 700 page nutshell book just three or four pages. Now thats a neet language.

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?

Re:Why the fuck

[arvindn]

RTFA. The discussion is about what to code the core stuff in, not about forcing a language on everyone else. And C is starting to show its age, even for doing the core stuff, in case you've been living under a cave.

I don't think so

[hak1du]

Last I looked, SmartEiffel...

• lacked dynamic loading of shared libraries
  
• lacked separate compilation
  
• lacked usable Gnome bindings
  
• lacked reflection
  
• failed to come even close to implementing the de-facto standard set by Eiffelstudio (no compatible thread implementation, no method pointers, incomplete library implementation)
  
• failed to come even within an order of magnitude of equivalent C++ code in terms of performance
  

Furthermore, Eiffel is hardly an open language standard in the same sense as C, C++, or C#; the evolution of the Eiffel language has been driven by Meyer's whims, not by any kind of independent community or standards body. The language definition had some serious problems (requirement for global type checking, covariance, lack of method pointers, etc.), some of which remain. Eiffel could have been a winner, a worthy successor to Pascal and Modula-2, back when those were still fashionable, more than a decade ago before Java, but its proponents blew it big time, both technically and business-wise. Let's not beat a dead horse.

In my opinion, C# is, in every way, a better-designed language than Eiffel, C# has better open source implementations, better open source libraries, better C/C++ interfaces, and more widespread industry acceptance.

Re:I don't think so

[hak1du]

Once open source software becomes dependant on C#, Microsoft will pull out their submarine patents and start shutting down open source projects. [...] Even if the ECMA demands Microsoft license their patents under ECMA standards,

ECMA not only demands RAND, they first of all demand disclosure of patents. Therefore, there are no "submarine patents"--the set of patents related to ECMA C# is well known. Furthermore, any patent enforcable on ECMA C# would have had to be filed at most a year after publication of the first draft and would be public by now, so even if Microsoft was lying through their teeth, we know by now the complete set of patents that could possibly be relevant.

Claims like yours that there are some mystery "submarine" patents related to ECMA C# are pure FUD.

Microsoft is not stupid. They didn't ask Ximian to use C# for nothing. They have something planned.

I see: so, according to you, the reason people are working on Mono is because Microsoft "asked" them. And, according to you, everybody is stupid except for Microsoft: stupid people investing their time in Mono, stupid companies investing millions in it, etc.

Dream on. The Mono developers are exercising an exruciating amount of care to make sure they have their legal bases covered. One only wishes other OSS developers were so careful.

What you should really worry about is what happens to all those OSS Java projects as Sun either goes out of business or gets more and more into bed with Microsoft. You see, while Microsoft clearly doesn't own ECMA C#, Sun owns the Java platform and large chunks of its implementation, with no free alternatives.

Re:I don't think so

[bheilig]

Just to bring you up to date:

Has reflection since they adopted the Eiffel Library Kernel Standard. This standard proposes the strictest and most comprehensive interface for reflection of any other OO language.

You're right, EiffelStudio is still far beyond SmartEiffel.

SmartEiffel did very well in the The Great Language Shootout back in 2001. I haven't seen any recent benchmarks but I do know that efficiency is a very high priority.

Eiffel is very much an open language. The ECMA committee is about to finish the written standard. Furthermore there has been NICE since about 1991. To say that it has been driven by Meyer's whims is to say that C++ has been driven by Stroustrup's whims. Sure they are instrumental in driving the standard, but they are not whims. Most people complain about Eiffel's lack of whims! The development of the Eiffel language has been the most structured of any I know.

I thought requirement for global type checking was a good thing.

Since when is covariance a serious problem! Covariance allows a lot of expressiveness and power. I think what you are referring to is CAT calls (Changed Availability and Type). Eiffel has an extremely tight type system, and this is a current hole in it. The hole is about half as wide as providing the ability to type cast.

Eiffel has method pointers and so much more. It has agents(chapter 25 from OOSC) which are functions treated as objects. Agents get all the benefits of objects including static typing, introspection, copying, comparison, etc. Furthermore agents support deferred parameters.

I do think C# is good, most likely because it has learned a lot from Eiffel. You won't see any direct mention of Eiffel in this article. However the style of generics and contracts are both Eiffel originals. Also Bertrand Meyer is part of the C# ECMA committee.

Objective C

[Xpilot]

I would very much like to see the Objective C bindings for Gnome updated, for it's a very interesting language to develop in. It is simple, elegent, and does not suffer from the featuritis of C++.

Re:Objective C

[Zobeid]

So how long does it take your typical C coder to learn Objective C? A couple of hours? Even if you begrudge a couple of precious hours gone from your life, that's still less time than it would take to learn most other new languages we might contemplate.

That's unless we simply plan on sticking with C and C++ from now on. . . But speaking for myself, I detest C++. Nothing would please me more than a widespread acknowledgment that C++ was a mistake from the beginning.

Re:Objective C

[tyrione]

Are you for real?

The entire ATT Wireless Call Suite (Axys Project and its various incarnations past version 4) was developed with NeXTSTEP/Openstep. Until Siemens came in and wanted to rip it apart that Nationwide Suite of MCCA when it became complex was not due to Objective-C's flaws but the Architectural flaws in design by Humans.

United States Postal Project was all Objective-C, Merrill Lynch has tons of Apps for its Enterprise that use Objective-C.

When Apple finally makes its Software Consulting push, firstly in the Federal Markets and later the general Fortune 1000 you will feel real smart about the comment, "Nobody uses Objective-C."

I could build a list of customers but that isn't my place.

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

[OneEyedApe]

(eq 'lisp 'scheme)
NIL

or to put it in plain English:
Common LISP is not Scheme

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?

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.

Replacement for C

[Eadwacer]

I thought that since C got it's start with BCPL that the replacement was going to be P.

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.

Realistically, Java

[Animats]

OK, you're doing a desktop. Mostly GUI elements, no hard real time requirements, lots of pointers, many developers.

Java seems appropriate here, if you can get the performance. It's a memory-safe language, and you don't have to obsess on memory management correctness. Garbage collection is acceptable. There's a big pool of Java developers. There's a hard-code open source compiler. Microsoft doesn't control the language or the environment.

Whether the rather clunky Java libraries add negative value is something you have to think about, hard. The language itself is OK.

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

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?

It's about time.

[Kickasso]

It's about time OSS developers switch to an Object-Oriented language with a sound typesystem, a sensible implementation of multiple inheritance, a non-broken collections library, a reasonable threading model, and, last but not least, with multiple implementations of an open standard driven by an independent body.

In short, a language which is not Eiffel.

How about ADA?

[burbilog]

Yes, it's difficult at first, but when you learn the ropes it's the best language around. I wrote some utilities in Ada for my company (nobody cared how these are written, it was purely my initiative) and know what I'm talking about.

Gtk bindings for Ada DO exist.

Pascal

[ffallen]

Ok. I know I'm going to get crap for this, however, Pascal is a good language that is easy to learn, readable, and efficient. Most people complain that its a "teaching language" and is not "industrial strength" however, tell that to the embedded programmers who still use it. Some Pascalisms, I agree are fairly annoying, but why not update the language instead of defining an entirely new one. There are at least two open source Pascal compilers (GNU and FreePascal) so why not make some efforts in bringing those two languages up to speed with some of the features that everyone is griping don't exist in this language or that language? Eiffel is arcane, but does have some useful features that others lack. However, I'd much rather have a language which is readable, efficient, well known, and available for many platforms. Lets work with what we have. Too many damn languages are being invented rather than concentrating on what we have and making it *right*.

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:and yet....

[AceMarkE]

Just want to comment on the memory leak issue. It's a whole lot _harder_ to leak memory in a GC'ed language, but it's still possible, especially when dealing with native interop issues (JNI, P/Invoke, or C-based extensions). Actually, the other major concern is reference issues. As far as I know, if a reference isn't nulled out, GCs often won't pick up the object. Things will still get cleaned up in the end, so the usual form of leaking is basically gone, but memory pressure during execution can get pretty bad.

I'll freely admit I'm not an expert on the topic and don't know the exact details of the Java and .Net GCs, so any further comments would be appreciated.

Mark Erikson

Utterly Pointless

[davidle]

I've seen this debate brewing for years, and as a developer on other platforms I find it plain silly. For years people around Gnome have said "Oh C, it's great, it is neutral and you can write your own bindings etc." It is quite clear that this is BS because you actually have to write that software with a language, toolkit and architecture that is structurally sound for what you are doing.

KDE solved this years ago by recognising that object-oriented development needed to be done, but at a reasonably low-level so that the base of the desktop environment was compiled natively and ran efficiently. Even at the time this meant C++, but C++ toolkits were never very good at all, even on Windows. That was the rational behind using Qt. This debate ended pretty much on the first day that KDE was conceived!

I laugh really, as the people who have whinged and whined have been proven to be, well; whingers and whiners.

Compiles to C != As fast as C

[marcovje]

I don't know Eiffel that well, and can't judge the fitness of the language itself, but:

- Compiles to language X != As fast as X. Runtime helpers, higher level constructs etc. Eifel might be fast, but compiling to a language considered fast doesn't prove that.
- The language is relatively unknown. This was another advantage of C/C++ and things like Java and Delphi: everybody knows it.

I'm not going to learn a language for Gnome, one for KDE etc etc.

perl6

[SanityInAnarchy]

Ok, perl is not exactly everyone's favorite language. But it does have plenty of libraries, and perl6 looks as though it will clean up some problems with perl5.

It definitely does for speed. Testing ponie (a perl5 implementation on parrot, the perl6 generic bytecode engine), I saw at least a 20% improvement on every single test I tried with ponie vs. the official perl5 interpreter.

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:Do the right thing please!

[Dr. Sp0ng]

I love Gnome, but I will forever banish it from my system if they adopt Mono/C#. I do not want to worry about how firm the footing is under Mono.

That's quite a knee-jerk reaction. The C# language and core runtime stuff is standardized - Microsoft can't do anything about Mono using them. The parts that are questionable are the extended base libraries - things like Windows.Forms and so on. But Gnome doesn't need to use those anyway - the core language and bindings for the Gnome libraries is enough, and is safe from Microsoft's meddling.

C# is a very nice language, and the Gnome project would be wise to adopt it. I had my doubts, but I've been messing around with it, and it really is a well-designed language.

Nope

[rauhest]

It doesn't support internationalisation.

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.