Future of Gnucash (Javascript?)

[John Ralls]

On Dec 29, 2010, at 7:18 AM, Donald Allen wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 10:00 AM, Anthony Dardis <adardis at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, 29 Dec 2010 04:32:44 -0500, Herbert Thoma
>> <herbert.thoma at iis.fraunhofer.de> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 28.12.2010 22:35, Christian Stimming wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Am Dienstag, 28. Dezember 2010 schrieb Jeff Warnica:
>> 
>> <snip>
>> 
>>> I am not that sure that an interpreted language is a good idea. But I am
>>> an electrical engineer not a computer scientist. So I tend to prefer
>>> languages that are closer to the hardware ...
>>> 
>>>  Herbert.
>>> 
>> 
>> My recent programming experience is a lot of little number-theory puzzles
>> from the Euler Project, 40 or 50 in Python, the last 10 or so in c. I have
>> something of the same feeling of wanting to be close to the metal. But I
>> have to say that Python is a real joy. It is syntactically beautiful. It is
>> semantically amazingly powerful: all those basic data structure types
>> (lists, trees, ...) are mostly transparently available (for example: I'm
>> pretty sure that the set type is implemented as a balanced tree, since
>> random access is incredibly fast even for sets with millions of members).
>> Since it encourages functional style programming, it's possible to write
>> astonishingly elegant code. (Of course, it's also possible not to, but that
>> goes without saying.) For computation, Python is really really fast: agreed,
>> the programs I've tried run about 10 times faster in c than in Python, but
>> on modern hardware we're still talking hundreds of milliseconds. For
>> GnuCash, computation speed is irrelevant. The GUI will be handled by GTK (or
>> whatever).
>> 
>> And coding a solution in Python, I suspect, is always going to be a lot
>> faster than in c, assuming equivalent levels of experience in both.
> 
> Amen to everything you've said here. And coding in Python is going to
> be faster than c++ as well. And finding people who can write good
> Python is always going to be an easier task than c or c++. Another
> issue is readability. I would assert that it is far easier to read and
> understand someone else's Python than someone else's c++, especially a
> factor in a volunteer project like this one, where people can wander
> off without jeopardizing their paycheck.

The only advantage that C++ has over Python is that one can mix C and C++ code. That would allow smaller, safer changes as code is reworked. It's only a short-term advantage for all of the reasons Mike gave.

I'm not enthusiastic about using Javascript for the core code (engine, backends, business, etc.) but I think that it makes a lot of sense to make it possible to write reports with Javascript instead of Guile. With the switch to WebKit from Gtkhtml, we have a Javascript interpreter built in and already integrated with the HTML display. Yes, it's a short jump from there to having a Javascript-based web app version of Gnucash. 

(I disagree with you about readability, but I like C++ and you don't.)

Regards,
John Ralls