Building Linux Applications With JavaScript

crankymonkey writes "The GNOME desktop environment could soon gain support for building and extending applications with JavaScript thanks to an experimental new project called Seed. Ars Technica has written a detailed tutorial about Seed with several code examples. The article demonstrates how to make a GTK+ application for Linux with JavaScript and explains how Seed could influence the future of GNOME development. In some ways, it's an evolution of the strategy that was pioneered long ago by GNU with embedded Scheme. Ars Technica concludes: 'The availability of a desktop-wide embeddable scripting language for application extension and plugin writing will enable users to add lots of rich new functionality to the environment. As this technology matures and it becomes more tightly integrated with other language frameworks such as Vala, it could change the way that GNOME programmers approach application development. JavaScript could be used as high-level glue for user interface manipulation and rapid prototyping while Vala or C are used for performance-sensitive tasks.'"

Comments

Re:Takes the idea of "open source" to a new level

[FishWithAHammer]

Gnome is about providing a programming environment for normal people to use

Then why the fuck is its primary windowing library (and a lot of other stuff) written in something as absolutely cretinous as object-oriented C? You get the compatibility arguments, sure, until you start running into breaking ABI because you've run out of reserved values in the core structs (like they're facing now, hence the talk about GTK 3) and other problems related to old, problematic languages. C might be easy to port (and yes, it is), but holy shit, does it make transitions shit--and very much not "for normal people". (Or businesses, but hey, fuck them, they dare write proprietary code, etc.)

GNOME isn't about a programming environment or any sort of environment for normal people. I'm not sure what it's about, but that ain't it.

Re:QtScript

[RiotingPacifist]

yeah but the gnome guys implement the same thing and the partially washed masses that use ubuntu suddenly get to play.