Programming Language (was: State of the GnuCash project: A call for help)

[Linas Vepstas]

Hi,

On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 08:26:12AM -0600, Herman was heard to remark:
> On Tuesday 12 August 2003 7:30 am, Robert Uhl wrote:
> > Christian Stimming <stimming at tuhh.de> writes:
> > > *Gnucash was started in 1998*.  That's basically it.  C++ compilers
> > > were not yet mature and standarized enough on the variety of platforms
> > > considered at that time.  Same for Java or Python.  So C was the only
> > > option *at that time*.
> >
> > Well, and most free software is in C, and the alternatives have rather
> > stronger negatives and weaker positives, perhaps?
> 
> Also bear in mind that the FSF still do not recommend the use of C++.  There 
> are some awfully bright people in that group, so they must have a good reason 
> for that sentiment.

Well, we think we're pretty smart here too :-)

I do not know of any language that would have allowed gnucash to have
the same amount of features and do it with fewer lines of code and/or
less complexity. 

For example: a perl regex is one line of code, as opposed to 50 or 100
in C.  But 100 lines of code is a drop in the bucket, and perl is 
a lot more verbose for some other tasks.  One can make similar
statements about any other of the languages I know of.

I *am* vaguely toying with the idea of inventing an uber-language that 
would simplify much of what gnucash does (much of it is glue code 
between GUI, engine objects, and file/database storage).  But that's 
neither here nor there, its rather a research-projecty kind of thing.

--linas


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pub  1024D/01045933 2001-02-01 Linas Vepstas (Labas!) <linas at linas.org>
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