Re: Where is Gnome heading?

On Wed, Sep 20, 2006 at 10:04:22 +0100, sardaukar siet wrote:
[..]
Please consider embracing C#, it's an ECMA standard. Creating apps with
it would be awesome (goodbye malloc() and rogue pointers crashing
everything). C is adequate ... for a time when RAM was precious and
home computers couldn't afford more sophisticated (CPU intensive)
language features.

C# is already being embraced[1] and a lot of the really interesting
application development is already happening in C# (tomboy, diva,
beagle). Personally I don't particularly like C#, just like I don't
particularly like Java. When I see a developer using Mono, I see
someone who hasn't discovered Python yet :-)

As for rewriting GNOME in C#, I doubt it'll ever happen. I hope it'll
never happen, because the day GNOME forces me to use C# for developing
is the day I switch away from it. There are so many opinions out there
of what is the best language to use that forcing a community into using
a specific one is suicide. Yeah, sure there could be bridges/wrappers
to other languages (just like there now is Gtk#/PyGTK/gtkmm/...).
However, C is the lowest common denominator. It simply makes more sense
to use C than C# for the low-level plumbing.

Also, you are a desktop user, but don't assume that all GNOME users are.
Much interesting development is happening in the embedded space at the
moment, and it seems GTK/GNOME is becoming somewhat of a favourite
there. I suspect its usage of C is a main contributing factor. Yeah,
sure you could put Mono on embedded devices, but in a market place where
every cent spent on hardware counts it's a hard sell. The reason you
find Java on devices is for its support of downloadable applications
(i.e applets). By using Linux with GTK they get downloadable
applications without the overhead of a VM.

/M

[1]: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/devel-announce-list/2006-August/msg00000.html

--
Magnus Therning (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
magnus@xxxxxxxxxxxx Jabber: magnus.therning@xxxxxxxxx
http://therning.org/magnus

Software is not manufactured, it is something you write and publish.
Keep Europe free from software patents, we do not want censorship
by patent law on written works.

"The fronting for the eighty-yard long marble-topped bar had been made
by stitching together nearly twenty thousand Antarean Mosaic Lizard
skins, despite the fact that the twenty thousand lizards concerned had
needed them to keep their insides in."

-- The Book decribing Milliways' politically incorrect decor.

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