[Kde-finance-apps] Some interesting news from the GnuCash project

[Thomas Baumgart]

On Friday 05 March 2010 15:16:16 Thomas Baumgart wrote:

> Here are some more reactions:

[...]

And here two more:

> It doesn't seem able to read any of my XML files.  Oh well.
>
> While this may be/is guaranteed to restart the various language wars
> (can we do this in Visual Basic, please :)), I think it's a great idea -
> use the best tools available for different parts of the code.
>
> Someone (John Ralls?) asked why we would keep the core in C.  Wx vs Qt
> came up.
>
> I'd like to see discussion of why different technologies would be used
> for various parts of the system.  What features does the engine need?
> Why C++ for the UI?  Would we do better with a language using garbage
> collection so that we don't need to worry about memory?  How would this
> coincide with rewriting Gnucash/Cutecash as a database app?
>
> I would also like to suggest that work on this take a back seat to
> getting 2.4 out the door.  Boring, yes, but there are lots of bugs in
> bugzilla.  Can we go through and identify which ones we would like fixed
> by 2.4?
>

I'd like to second Phil's comments, with which I agree completely. While I
don't have any standing as a Gnucash developer, I've worked on and managed
large software projects for a long time, so I do know something about the
issues being raised here.

In particular, I think choosing C++ for a UI re-write deserves some
discussion. Phil raised one of the issues -- lack of memory management. My
personal opinion of C++ is pretty low -- I think it's far too complex,
needlessly so (and yes, I've written C++ code myself and read a lot more of
it, mostly in a pretty horrified state). Yes, I understand that it's widely
used, but that doesn't mean it's good. I would cite Windows as an example of
this phenomenon. And while it's widely used, I think it's difficult to find
people who can write clean, readable, understandable code in C++, something
that I think is key to a project like this, where code needs to pass easily
through the eyes and brains of multiple people. So I would urge the Gnucash
powers-that-be not to view C++ as a default, if there really is a desire to
move to more modern languages than C. If C++ is ultimately chosen, it should
only be after careful consideration of all the alternatives.


-- 

Regards

Thomas Baumgart

GPG-FP: E55E D592 F45F 116B 8429   4F99 9C59 DB40 B75D D3BA
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"Hey! I could use Tex!" and I've only gotten to use it a little
so far but it's so far superiour to MS Words "be everywhere do
everything"-ness it's not even funny... (lordSauron)
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