Sure, but what about core projects? For example, the GNOME project decides to write a GUI log reader. Also, if they rewrite core components of GNOME and don't want to use C, which language are they going to use? What they want is a language that will be used for such projects, a standard language for the project. Take for example the GNU project, in their coding guidelines, they advocate the usage of the C language. The requirements for that language GNOME wants are as follow:
High-level language
Safe language
Good programmer productivity
Good library
Widely known
Reasonably fast
Free software
The language that fits this bill the best so far is Mono with C#.
O'Caml would be a mistake. The prefered paradigm is the functional one, and many hackers do not like it (don't ask me why, I love it.) The best choice is C#: it looks like languages people know (C and C++), it's developping rapidly in the Linux world (the Mono guys are developping really, really fast) and you don't scare away Windows developpers.
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
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)
That's such an idiotic comment. You are then of the opinion that projects such as Linux, Mozilla, OpenOffice.Org, The GIMP, etc. are useless because Windows, Internet Explorer, MS Office and Photoshop are available and people don't really care for what software they use? You say that competition is useless: let's all stop using alternative operating systems and let's all use Windows, there's no point in fighting it, it will come out on top!
Wake up, competition in the search engine industry benifits the users, just like Linux made Microsoft work harder on Windows.
Programmers just don't yoda talking like, and a slightly-off Germanic style of grammar just doesn't fit well with an activity like programming that is more mathematical and logical than like communication.
For people who think there must be something better to write web-based applications than PHP, I invite you all to take a look at Seaside by Avi Bryant, a web framework available for Squeak and, I think, VisualWorks Smalltalk. It uses continuations to make programming a web application basically the same as coding a desktop application. It features many, many things that PHP cannot do.
If you can't see the good, you are doomed to program static applications are your life, while I can add things to a running application. That's right, my application is running, I decide to add a functionality. I code it, and POOF it appears on my applicaiton and it works. No need to stop the application, no need to do a big recompile. You seem to be just as blind as Chuck Moore.
Write a dotimes operator in C. Usage is dotimes(int i, 10) { printf("%d\n"); } and it will print 0 to 9. Beware of inadvertant variable caputres and multiple evaluation (if the second argument is x++ for example)
In Smalltalk, I can do this: Smalltalk at: #MyClass methodDict values do: [:method | Transcript show: method getSource ] which will give my the source code of all methods of MyClass. Can you do it?
I can do this: myArray:= #(1 1.5 $a 'Hello world'), can you do it?
The fact is, there are many C cannot do itself. You can explore the alternatives (Smalltalk, Lisp, O'Caml, etc.) and understand or just live in your little dream world where C can do everything, even if that statement is false.
But C lacks many features that becoming increasingly important to make dynamic, featured applications. I can think about first-class functions/methods, introspection, etc. You can have those in C, but only if you follow Greenspun's Tenth rule ("Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.")
and soon Linux will not run anymore on low end systems, either requiring a super machine (like Windows) or running painfully slow.
What _one_ project does doesn't affect what other projects do. If you have a good machine, you have the option of using GNOME. Otherwise, stick to the command-line or fvwm or whatever is light enough for your setup. You don't whine about Mozilla being written in C++ yet being extremely big and slow. Even if GNOME uses C# (which is not that much slower for their intended uses by the way), the kernel and basic tools will still be written in C, and there will still be lightweight projects for lower-end machines.
We don't need to keep making projects that fit all sizes.
How about still using Assmbly and not needing a Thunderbird 1GHz to run a GTK+ application? Why not develop a GNOME computer chip where GNOME would run directly off metal and get real performances?
Using C# will not make performances that much worse, because they intend to write mostly GUI program which spend 90% of their time idling, waiting for user input. Are you telling me you want your idling time to be optimized?
The bottom line is that C# is a high-level language and C is just a portable assembly. What does that mean to developpers?
Faster development time: no need to hunt memory allocation bugs, pointer arithmetic problems, no need to reinvent standard stuff all the time. It also means that as a hobbyist developper, you can do more from 20:00 to 22:00 before going to sleep than in C.
Reduced complexity: the programmer focuses only on the problem at hand, not on the machine-sepcific details as well
Less security issues to worry about: no buffer overflows
Less headaches: did you forget a star before a variable to derefernece your poiunter?
Users also experience benefits:
Applications come out sooner, so less waiting time
Applications have a whole family of bugs that cannot happen, so more stability
More portability: if the VM runs on two platforms, it's pretty sure you can run the application on two platforms too.
Everyone benifits from the GNOME people using Mono/C#, and I don't think many people run a desktop GUI on their Pentium 133MHz, especially not GNOME. GNOME does not need to suit EVERYONE and work on every machine, that's just too limiting. If you want a light window manager, use Blackbox or IceWM or twm or fvwm2. The GNOME people don't have "being able to run on a 7 year old computer" up on their list. They do have "improving the quality of our software" and "giving users a great desktop experience".
For all those who think everything should be coded in C for speed reasons, I invite you to search Slashdot for the interview with Chuck Moore (of Forth fame) and go here to read interviews with the guy. If you find agreeing with him, you are stuck in the 60's-70's. If not, you might reconsider your position on the usage of byte-compiled, high-level languages for user applications.
Most functional programming language implementations optimize tail-recursion, so it's not a problem. For example, in O'Caml, a non-tail-recursive factorial function looks like this:
let rec fact n = if n <= 1 then 1 else n * (fact (n - 1));;
But, as you can see, the answer is kept on the stack, so that particular function can overflow. However, consider this one:
let fact n = let rec fact_aux acc n = if n <= 1 then acc else fact_aux (acc * n) (n - 1) in fact_aux 1 n;;
Since the answer is always kept in acc, it's an iterative process, so it will never overflow if the compiler optimizes it. O'Caml does it, Scheme implementations do it, I think Haskell does it, many Common Lisp implementations do it, etc. So it's not a problem.
I myself am a big Smalltalk fan. VisualWorks Smalltalk is a very real alternative. It runs fast, on multiple platforms, has all the bindings you want, a great GUI, etc. It is faster than Java, it is far clearer than Perl, it is easier than C. Smalltalk just needs to get rid of his '70's reputation of being big, slow and expensive, because that's not the case anymore.
If you are interested in Smalltalk, you should get the non-commercial version of VisualWorks or Squeak.
What's more, Miguel de Icaza (the guy who said that) was talking about user applications. Unless someone can explain to me why a garbage collector for an IRC client or a payroll application is a bad thing, why I should fear buffer overflows, problems with pointer arithmetics, etc. in those kind of applications, please tell me. Does the programmer need to spin my hard drive backwards or something? It seems to me that high-level languages will do just fine for those tasks.
You know the old adage, "Use the right tool for the right job?" Well, use C when you need it. C is probably the most misused language I've ever seen. But of course, this is Slashdot, the land where opinions are forged and are never to change.
>>> import array >>> print array.__doc__ This module defines an object type which can efficiently represent an array of basic values: characters, integers, floating point numbers. Arrays are sequence types and behave very much like lists, except that the type of objects stored in them is constrained. The type is specified at object creation time by using a type code, which is a single character. The following type codes are defined:
Type code C Type Minimum size in bytes 'c' character 1 'b' signed integer 1 'B' unsigned integer 1 'u' Unicode character 2 'h' signed integer 2 'H' unsigned integer 2 'i' signed integer 2 'I' unsigned integer 2 'l' signed integer 4 'L' unsigned integer 4 'f' floating point 4 'd' floating point 8
The constructor is:
array(typecode [, initializer]) -- create a new array
>>>
and usage:
>>> a = array.array('B') >>> a.append(10) >>> a.append('HellO!') Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? TypeError: an integer is required >>>
It's nice that everything you like about Eclipse comes from Smalltalk. I like to joke and say that there is a race between Microsoft and Sun to see which will make its language (C# or Java) a Smalltalk dialect first:)
Of course, it's very nice that languages begin to look more and more like Smalltalk, because ti really kicks ass.
I love Linux as much as the next geek, but I have to say that right now, my favourite OS is Panther. And I have no reason to feel guilty about it, if anyone should be guilty, it should be the Linux developpers. When I took my friend's digital camera and plugged it in the USB slot of my iBook, the camera was instantly recognized and all the pictures were imported through iPhoto. As far as I know, using USB devices is still a chore in Linux. Same thing for windowing: I don't need to find out specs about my 5 year-old monitor. How about IPv6? It's already built-in in OSX, you don't even have to do the slightest thing! Filevault encrypts your home directory automatically if you enable that feature.
For a while I liked doing things myself, but recently I've become a fan or OSX, high-level languages (Scheme, Python, Smalltalk) and pretty much anything that means I don't have to do everything myself.
Havin the possibility to upgrade the CPU of a console is in my opinion the worst thing that could ever happen to consoles. Recently, I wanted to play Splinter Cell, so I went to the store and looked at two versions: the PC version and the PS2 version. I checked the specs of the PC version and I wasn't sure whether my system would support it, so I bought the PS2 version instead. Since all consoles have the exact same hardware, you can be sure that when you pop the game into your console that it will run.
Making it possible to change the CPU, the RAM, etc. will give gamers the same problems the PC's have: the companies will just go and code and not make sure it runs on the most basic system, so you have to change your CPU and stuff to play.
Leave the consoles as they are: unchangeable black boxes. I don't upgrade my Athlon 1GHz because I buy console games. I don't want to worry about console upgrading too.
Slashdot Mirror
- High-level language
- Safe language
- Good programmer productivity
- Good library
- Widely known
- Reasonably fast
- Free software
The language that fits this bill the best so far is Mono with C#.O'Caml would be a mistake. The prefered paradigm is the functional one, and many hackers do not like it (don't ask me why, I love it.) The best choice is C#: it looks like languages people know (C and C++), it's developping rapidly in the Linux world (the Mono guys are developping really, really fast) and you don't scare away Windows developpers.
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
No, Ericsson uses Erlang, a functional, concurrent programming language.
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)
I bet $10 that this fellow gets a new job at Microsoft for advocating C# and .NET in less than a month ;)
Wake up, competition in the search engine industry benifits the users, just like Linux made Microsoft work harder on Windows.
I'm not sure I get this.
This is far more readable than in languages like C.I categorically REFUSE to use a language that looks like somebody bared up a dinner sized portion of type declarations all over the screen. (C)
I categorically REFUSE to use a language that looks like somebody bared up a dinner sized portion of weird operators. (Perl)
For people who think there must be something better to write web-based applications than PHP, I invite you all to take a look at Seaside by Avi Bryant, a web framework available for Squeak and, I think, VisualWorks Smalltalk. It uses continuations to make programming a web application basically the same as coding a desktop application. It features many, many things that PHP cannot do.
Using unit testing in a test-first mode of development can make type problems go away.
If you can't see the good, you are doomed to program static applications are your life, while I can add things to a running application. That's right, my application is running, I decide to add a functionality. I code it, and POOF it appears on my applicaiton and it works. No need to stop the application, no need to do a big recompile. You seem to be just as blind as Chuck Moore.
- Write a dotimes operator in C. Usage is dotimes(int i, 10) { printf("%d\n"); } and it will print 0 to 9. Beware of inadvertant variable caputres and multiple evaluation (if the second argument is x++ for example)
- In Smalltalk, I can do this: Smalltalk at: #MyClass methodDict values do: [:method | Transcript show: method getSource ] which will give my the source code of all methods of MyClass. Can you do it?
- I can do this: myArray
:= #(1 1.5 $a 'Hello world'), can you do it?
The fact is, there are many C cannot do itself. You can explore the alternatives (Smalltalk, Lisp, O'Caml, etc.) and understand or just live in your little dream world where C can do everything, even if that statement is false.But C lacks many features that becoming increasingly important to make dynamic, featured applications. I can think about first-class functions/methods, introspection, etc. You can have those in C, but only if you follow Greenspun's Tenth rule ("Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.")
What _one_ project does doesn't affect what other projects do. If you have a good machine, you have the option of using GNOME. Otherwise, stick to the command-line or fvwm or whatever is light enough for your setup. You don't whine about Mozilla being written in C++ yet being extremely big and slow. Even if GNOME uses C# (which is not that much slower for their intended uses by the way), the kernel and basic tools will still be written in C, and there will still be lightweight projects for lower-end machines.
We don't need to keep making projects that fit all sizes.
Using C# will not make performances that much worse, because they intend to write mostly GUI program which spend 90% of their time idling, waiting for user input. Are you telling me you want your idling time to be optimized?
The bottom line is that C# is a high-level language and C is just a portable assembly. What does that mean to developpers?
Users also experience benefits:
Everyone benifits from the GNOME people using Mono/C#, and I don't think many people run a desktop GUI on their Pentium 133MHz, especially not GNOME. GNOME does not need to suit EVERYONE and work on every machine, that's just too limiting. If you want a light window manager, use Blackbox or IceWM or twm or fvwm2. The GNOME people don't have "being able to run on a 7 year old computer" up on their list. They do have "improving the quality of our software" and "giving users a great desktop experience".
For all those who think everything should be coded in C for speed reasons, I invite you to search Slashdot for the interview with Chuck Moore (of Forth fame) and go here to read interviews with the guy. If you find agreeing with him, you are stuck in the 60's-70's. If not, you might reconsider your position on the usage of byte-compiled, high-level languages for user applications.
Vince.
If you are interested in Smalltalk, you should get the non-commercial version of VisualWorks or Squeak.
You know the old adage, "Use the right tool for the right job?" Well, use C when you need it. C is probably the most misused language I've ever seen. But of course, this is Slashdot, the land where opinions are forged and are never to change.
Of course, it's very nice that languages begin to look more and more like Smalltalk, because ti really kicks ass.
5: Insightful?! He took a quote and said "Good point". Please mod this down.
For a while I liked doing things myself, but recently I've become a fan or OSX, high-level languages (Scheme, Python, Smalltalk) and pretty much anything that means I don't have to do everything myself.
Oh, and iChat AV rocks.
Making it possible to change the CPU, the RAM, etc. will give gamers the same problems the PC's have: the companies will just go and code and not make sure it runs on the most basic system, so you have to change your CPU and stuff to play.
Leave the consoles as they are: unchangeable black boxes. I don't upgrade my Athlon 1GHz because I buy console games. I don't want to worry about console upgrading too.
"Honey? You awake? Look, I have this very difficult problem at work..."