Using scripting languages for KDE4 main modules

Aaron J. Seigo aseigo at kde.org
Sat Oct 7 15:42:11 BST 2006


On Friday 06 October 2006 20:34, Dirk Mueller wrote:
> Actually,  the biggest discussion seemed to have evolved around "which
> language do we choose?" aka "does it have to be javascript?" - which
> apparently some people favor.

there seems to be some confusion around this, for whatever reason.

there are (to be general) two applications of "scripting" (e.g. non-compiled, 
dynamic) languages:

 - automating applications (in-application scripting)
 - application development (writing an entire application)

for the latter, i think javascript is rather unsuited for any application of 
size. you can certainly prototype smaller apps and what not and if you really 
feel motivated can indeed write larger apps in js, but it's really not the 
best fit language.

however, for application automation js is great because:

 - it's very lightweight (or at least, can be)
 - it's fast (or at least, can be)
 - it's easy to bind to
 - a LOT of people know it from such applications as the web

really, for application dev there are only a few choices, ruby and python 
being lead among them. i lean towards python if only because it's more widely 
accepted and used these days and has some key features like better (though 
hardly perfect) multibyte character support.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)
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