[Kde-bindings] KDE/kdebindings

[Thomas Moenicke]

On May 10, 2008, at 3:58 PM, Sebastian Sauer wrote:

> Richard Dale wrote:
>>> uh? afaik there are no policies and never where cause it would be  
>>> the
>>> dead of any kind of foss-project. guess it's not a matter of  
>>> 'allowed'
>>> (as in somebody needs to ok something) but more of 'whats  
>>> possible' (as
>>> in how could such a kplugin-based binding be integrated without  
>>> the need
>>> to add dirty hacks to plasma itself (what in turn would need such  
>>> a 'ok'
>>> :-) ).
>> Well Aaron says that he can't see any point in writing KDE programs  
>> in any
>> other language than C++, as the only advantage he can see is that you
>> don't need to compile.
>
> Well, it's his view and we just have another view. I had a similar
> mail-exchange with him a few months back and just came to the  
> conclusion that
> we agree to disagree there and did not try to future investigate  
> this since
> evangelism makes only fun on success :-)
>
>> I
>> sometimes have to take a ruby app, and code it in C++ instead to see
>> whether some bug in ruby-specific. When I do that it just seems so  
>> painful
>> compared with doing it in Ruby.
>
> Guess it depends on the use-case. If it comes to e.g. image- 
> processing I would
> always prefer C rather then C++, Python, Ruby, ... while I never  
> would use
> C/C++ for e.g. server-side web-stuff (I still wonder ebay doesn't  
> agree
> there) or batch-processing/automation-tasks (seems all distributions  
> agree
> there).
>
> Same for the desktop. C++ specially combined with Qt is very good  
> and powerful
> but still far away from RAD compared to QtRuby/PyQt which are able to
> increase my productivity by at least a factor of 5 if not more.
>
>> I routinely use irb to try little things
>> out when I'm coding something in Ruby - the whole way of going about
>> writing an app 'feels' very different to me.
>
> yes, same here (not irb but the 'feels' different). imho the  
> limitations of
> static languages like C++ or Java as well as missing high-level  
> functionality
> like e.g. the regexp-power of Perl, array-handling in Python or the  
> pure and
> real OO-concept of Ruby are part of the reason not even taken the  
> runtime
> manipulation / introspection into account.
>

It also needs to be mentioned that developers tend to live in their  
own universe containing language, tool chain, pecularities, compiler/ 
interpreter, strengths and weaknesses. If people who worked on  
something not GUI related want or have to try GUI development,  they  
will look for a toolkit in this universe. They will try to use the  
knowledge they already have. Maybe they will get to the conclusion  
that its best for enterprise desktop development to learn and use C++  
with Qt, which makes more than sense, but Eclipse is maybe a very good  
example on how to combine C/C++ and e.g. Java to make development more  
efficient. Also, if we want more commitment for KDE, we should, among  
other things, try to spread out development to other languages,  
especially for easy-to-write on-top-of-the-core stuff, while core  
technologies like KDE-core, Plasma or Akonadi should be written in C+ 
+. I can imagine that one or two developers would write a flashy  
desktop widget that gives status information about a server, website  
traffic, shows data that come from an Akonadi resource or whatever, if  
they had an easy opportunity to do this.

>> My plasma stuff didn't need any hacks to plasma because it couldn't  
>> tell
>> it was running Ruby.
>
> Fantastic! :)
>
>> I agree that following the standard Plasma packaging
>> convention for non-C++ languages is certainly a good idea, and  
>> probably
>> using the ScriptEngine api will have advantages in the future. I'll  
>> try
>> and get a ScriptEngine/Korundum based binding done in the playground,
>> rather than in kdebindings itself - I've thought about it a bit and  
>> it
>> will be possible to get pretty much the same api as I had before  
>> with a
>> bit of work.
>
> Even more great to hear.
>
>>>> The KDE community doesn't actually have any beginner ruby  
>>>> programmers,
>>>> only intermediate and advanced, and so while a dead simple  
>>>> interface is
>>>> good for JavaScript or BASIC, it isn't needed for Ruby.
>>>
>>> to sum it up: What is advanced in JavaScript is pre-beginners in  
>>> Ruby,
>>> hehe
>>> :) Sorry, failed to resist.
>> Yes, maybe ruby programmers are a bunch of snobs.
>>
>> Actually I think JavaScript is an interesting language, and there  
>> are some
>> libraries like Prototype, Dojo and JQuery that actually give you a  
>> very
>> nice programming environment. So there are certainly many advanced
>> JavaScript programmers, but there are so many more JavaScript  
>> programmers
>> that on average they are beginners.
>
> Well, for me a very important part of a language is what you are  
> able to do
> with it. There is just no cpan-like collection of modules around for
> JavaScript and in my eyes that language just didn't left it's original
> purpose to run on client-side combined with a browser yet. That may  
> change
> next few years but I don't see that happen any time soon. Well, we  
> will
> see :)
>
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