What's your favorite year end method?

[Charles Day]

On Dec 23, 2007 10:29 AM, Ron Adam <rrr at ronadam.com> wrote:

>
>
> Derek Atkins wrote:
> > "Donald Allen" <donaldcallen at gmail.com> writes:
> >
> >> No insult intended, but Paul Graham once observed that Perl programs
> >> look like a cartoon character swearing. One of the problems with the
> >> current Scheme implementation is that it's, well, Scheme, and
> >> therefore hard to read for people who aren't fluent in Lisp, the
> >> majority. I think Perl, powerful though it may be, is very hard to
> >> read. Tcl, too, and I've written a hell of a lot of Tcl code. This is
> >> the reason for my enthusiasm for Python -- it's easy to write concise,
> >> readable programs. Graham also observed that we spend a lot more time
> >> reading code than writing it. So I fear that writing reports in Perl
> >> smacks a bit of going from the frying pan into the fire.
> >
> > Keep in mind that the reason for moving away from scheme isn't how the
> > language looks, but the (thin) field of developers who can actually
> > use the language.  I suspect there are a LOT of PERL devs out there..
> > Certainly many more than there are Scheme devs.  Not that I'm arguing
> > for PERL as the new reporting language, but let's keep focused on the
> > goal, which requires us to explicitly state the goals.
> >
> >> I have no intention of starting a language flame war here, and I've
> >> been doing this for long enough (43 years professionally) to know this
> >> is a religious issue. I'd just hate to see this project repeat a past
> >> mistake. My $.02.
> >
> > And which "past mistake" would that be?  I'm not trying to start
> > a religious war, either, I'm just trying to understand where you're
> > coming from and what you mean.
> >
> > Thanks,
>
> I think Donald is just expressing a preference for Python as the plug-in
> language.  Python would be my preference as well as it's what I use most.
>
> I agree only one plug-in language should be used.
>
> I also think the plug-in language should be used for the druids as well,
> not just for reporting.
>
> I'm a new user of Gnucash.  Great program, Thanks!
>
> Ron


If I may inject my 2 cents here, it seems to me that the biggest current
problem with GnuCash reports is the godawful slowness. If picking one
language over another would have a significant impact on speed, then I think
that's valuable to consider. Scheme seems fine enough to me as a language,
but anything interpreted at run-time is too slow for certain reports in my
opinion.

-Charles