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GNOME and high-level languagesGNOME and high-level languagesPosted May 12, 2005 5:53 UTC (Thu) by dhess (guest, #7827)Parent article: A new Harmony Project I think there's a problem brewing in the GNOME project, one which the Harmony announcement has brought out in the open again. Novell and RedHat are both drawing a line in the sand, and I think that either a GNOME fork or RedHat's endorsement of a different desktop environment is increasingly likely. Either outcome will be detrimental to the GNU/Linux desktop effort, in the short term, at least; and will give companies like Microsoft plenty of, "Same old UNIX story, they're fragmenting again" fodder. Many GNOME hackers are waking up to the fact that C isn't a very productive language for developing most kinds of interactive desktop applications. (I didn't say it was a bad language, it's just not very productive for most applications of that class.) Unfortunately, C# appears to have caught the fancy of a large number of talented GNOME hackers. Many of the exciting up-and-coming GNOME desktop applications (Beagle, F-Spot, Muine, etc.) are written in C#. Offhand, I can't think of any GNOME desktop applications being written in Java. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few, I just haven't heard of them, and I don't recall seeing any mentioned on Planet GNOME. If nothing else, the C# crowd is winning the PR battle. Both companies have valid technical and/or legal reasons for their stances. Novell doesn't want to develop software based on the JVM because the JVM is effectively controlled by Sun, and apparently they don't think the free JVMs are mature enough to ship software on them. RedHat doesn't want to develop software based on Mono because they say they can't ship it (but can't say why). On the other hand, both companies have business reasons for their stances, too. Novell has captured a large developer mindshare with C# and knows they have the du jour "hot" language in the GNOME community. RedHat has to be feeling the pressure and is making large investments in Java tools and free JVM/class lib implementations, and is promoting that language as their champion versus C#. I think RedHat is fighting a losing battle. RedHat appears to be unable to generate any excitement in the GNOME community about Java, at least not outside the company (maybe even inside the company). This is in stark contrast to what's happening with Novell and C#. I don't know how such decisions are made by the GNOME project, but given the momentum behind C# in the GNOME developer circles, I find it hard to believe that Mono-based software won't soon be shipping with GNOME. Here's what Havoc Pennington had to say about this possibility:
I don't know what people expect Red Hat GNOME developers to do. We can't roll over and say "OK, we'll start hacking in C#, even though we don't see a path to shipping any of the stuff we're hacking on" - does anyone seriously expect that? I don't think these comments do much other than make RedHat look bad. It sounds like sour grapes at best and a threat at worst. Sorry, Havoc, but that's how it comes off. But instead of just complaining, I do have a better suggestion, and it's called Python. Why not push Python as the "officially endorsed high-level language" of the GNOME project instead of Java? There are plenty of very talented Python programmers out there. In the free software community, Python has at least as much developer mindshare momentum as C#. Code that doesn't run fast enough in Python can be written in C or C++ and wrapped with Python bindings very easily, or can be written in Pyrex. There are perfectly good GTK bindings for it. It's fantastic for rapid development. It's a community-developed language with no "ownership" issues. Every GNU/Linux distro has packages for it. Novell can make sound technical and legal arguments against requiring Java as part of GNOME, but not Python. Even one of RedHat's own, Seth Nickel, seems to think it's a good idea. So Havoc (Pennington, not the other guy with the l33t nick), if you're reading... OK, so you can't explain the reasons why RedHat can't ship Mono. Can you explain why you don't give Python the same endorsement for GNOME development as you do for Java?
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GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 12, 2005 7:21 UTC (Thu) by socket (guest, #43) [Link] I think this is a hard problem for us.Sun effectively controls Java. Microsoft's history makes many free software developers wary of anything they "give away," including C#, and in my opinion, rightly so. But I realize others feel differently, and I fully expect that someone will correct me by pointing out that Microsoft doesn't really control C#. That's a debate for another time. Being language-agnostic is a wonderful goal, and I'm an active follower of Parrot's development, but despite its power, there's still a relatively small number of useful languages supported. In the meantime, it means that we're just stuck with putting SWIG wrappers around each required C library, for each language, and then eventually rewriting stuff that's commonly used in C and adding more bindings. Being able to call Perl libraries from Ruby or Python just isn't possible until we have good implementations of each on Parrot. Choosing one of Perl, Python, Ruby, OCaml, Lisp, Standard ML, Modula-3, Forth, Postscript, or anyone else's favorite scripting language leads us down another path: we choose favorites. But honestly, I've come to have several favorite languages, and would be disappointed if I couldn't use whatever I'm happiest with at that moment on my weekend project to make a better recipe manager. So here we are. I don't want my software dependent on libraries or tools controlled by Sun or Microsoft. I'm sure many of us don't want to spend our time scratching our heads at some obtuse bit of Perl from CPAN if it made up part of a core library we had to call in to. I'm sure we also grit our teeth and wish Python were more like Ruby, or the other way around. And others can't get past the parentheses of Lisp. And we all want more libraries, and desktop systems, to have support for our favorite language. It's a hard problem. I just to emphasize the point that we don't force ourselves down paths we can't backtrack from. I want us all to think about what it would really mean to say, "For this desktop environment, your development language is really just $LANG. The others will kinda sorta work, but they're not supported anywhere near as well." Our strength comes with and partly because of a diversity of ideologies related to programming languages. Let's not be so quick to throw that away.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 12, 2005 14:37 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] "Our strength comes with and partly because of a diversity of ideologies related to programming languages."Really? From here it looks as if each of these ideologies saps our strength. Whether it's built-in garbage collection, or object orientation, "there's more than one way to do it", "lambda the ultimate, or "builds and does", we are the poorer for being locked into it, even if only in a single project. The best that might be said about a diversity of them is that it may undermine allegiance to any one of them. Even then, we are led to believe that anything common to all the languages we know is god-given. We are better off with pragmatic languages. Survey the programs on your favorite distribution, and you'll find (in order) C, C++, a few in Perl, fewer in Python. Java is largely confined to programs for people who are already obliged (by corporate diktat?) to use it, or write it. These languages rule not because they're especially good at anything particular, but because they don't pretend to know better than we do what we're trying to do: C, because it doesn't pretend to know much of anything; C++, because it is happy to get out of the way; Perl, because it's all over the place.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 12, 2005 16:02 UTC (Thu) by shahms (subscriber, #8877) [Link] Um, I think you'll find the actual order (at least for FC4) is going to be:C, C++, Python, Perl. Almost all of the Fedora GUI system tools are Python. There are very, very few progams that are built using Perl. automake and autoconf are the biggest ones. foomatic also uses perl and I think libtool.
Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of packages that require perl, but most of these are perl modules and not applications.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 12, 2005 17:20 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] That was what I expected to find, but it wasn't what I found. Your mileage may vary. I didn't look at a Red Hat system, which undoubtedly has lots of Python programs not found on other distros. Python is another pragmatic language, anyway, that "plays well with others".
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 12, 2005 23:05 UTC (Thu) by bk (guest, #25617) [Link] automake/autoconf uses m4, or am I missing something obvious?
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 13, 2005 9:36 UTC (Fri) by wilck (subscriber, #29844) [Link] autoconf: m4automake: perl
That's what it used to be.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 13, 2005 4:11 UTC (Fri) by green (guest, #29086) [Link] For Fedora Core 4 the order will be C, C++, Java, Lisp/Scheme, Perl, Ada, Python, Assembly (ignoring shell scripts, most of which are auto* files anyways).
Here's the data to back this up:
AG
As I said Posted May 13, 2005 6:08 UTC (Fri) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] "Java is largely confined to programs for people who are already obliged (by corporate diktat?) to use it, or write it."
Eclipse 1310322 How many of these are useful to somebody not already obliged to run Java, for being obliged to write it? Sure, Sun shoehorned the stuff into OO.o, but that's corporate diktat too.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 14, 2005 14:58 UTC (Sat) by ohanssen (subscriber, #2761) [Link] Well. I have seen examples of the opposite. People want to use Java, but are not allowed to (by some "corporate diktat"), because somebody strongly belives that dot net and C# is the right choice. And in another case, because of ideological reasons ("Java is not free software", etc. etc.).
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 12, 2005 8:14 UTC (Thu) by vgough (guest, #2781) [Link] Quote:I think RedHat is fighting a losing battle. RedHat appears to be unable to generate any excitement in the GNOME community about Java, at least not outside the company (maybe even inside the company). This is in stark contrast to what's happening with Novell and C#. I don't know how such decisions are made by the GNOME project, but given the momentum behind C# in the GNOME developer circles, I find it hard to believe that Mono-based software won't soon be shipping with GNOME. This reminds me of RedHat's stance on KDE years ago, and it is sad to see what appears to be the same situation brewing. I was a user/supporter of RedHat for a long time, but eventually moved to Mandrake (and then Suse) because RedHat wouldn't give me what I wanted on my desktop -- KDE. Obviously both Java and C# have a significant mindshare and aren't going away anytime soon. Just like with KDE, eventually RedHat is going to have to realize they need to ship what their customers' want. Having some secret objection to C# isn't going to cut it. It is hard to garner support from open source people by displaying a closed-source mentality (the whole "we have reasons but can't talk about them" bit). In order to build bridges, the first step is open dialog.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 12, 2005 18:22 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link] Just like with KDE, eventually RedHat is going to have to realize they need to ship what their customers' want. Having some secret objection to C# isn't going to cut it. It is hard to garner support from open source people by displaying a closed-source mentality (the whole "we have reasons but can't talk about them" bit).It seems likely that there are legal issues involved here. If you've ever have legal issues, you know rule number one: don't talk about it.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 12, 2005 12:16 UTC (Thu) by liljencrantz (subscriber, #28458) [Link] I am surprised people are just accepting RedHats stance on this. Gnome is one of the largest open source projects around, and RedHat is simply saying that a cool piece of technology can't be included, but they won't say why. This makes it impossible to have a technical discussion of the problem, and thus impossible for the community to solve it. That kind of closed source mentality should not carry _any_ weight in an open source project, even if is coming from a behemoth like RH.
If the good folks at RH signed away their right to even discuss what is wrong with Mono, then they made a _huge_ mistake, and will have to bite the bullet. Either break the NDA or whatever is keeping them from discussing this and risk having to pay millions or accept that Gnome will move on without them. This does not mean Gnome would have to be forked, simply that RH would have to ship a crippled version of Gnome, just like they today cripple Gstreamer and Xmms.
C# patent problem ?? Posted May 12, 2005 13:01 UTC (Thu) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link] It's one thing for Microsoft to publish a language spec as a standards proposal. But have they got patent claims on C#/mono technology users ? They might be most happy for the supposedly free world to get exited about mono if they can raise patent revenue from it from all corporate users behind closed doors.
C# patent problem ?? Posted May 12, 2005 14:30 UTC (Thu) by liljencrantz (subscriber, #28458) [Link] Patents are not bound to a specific standard. Given that Virtual machines all look quite a bit like each other, no matter if they parse CLR or Java bytecode, arguments about Mono being more 'dangerous' than Java, Smalltalk or Python is mostly FUD.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 12, 2005 13:49 UTC (Thu) by hp (subscriber, #5220) [Link] Nobody is just accepting our stance that I see.
My post said simply: if we have to bite the bullet we will bite it. I am not trying to veto what GNOME does.
It's possible we can figure out how to ship Mono eventually, even. But as I said, I don't yet see the light at the end of that tunnel.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 12, 2005 13:53 UTC (Thu) by liljencrantz (subscriber, #28458) [Link] The way I see it, the fact that no Mono applications are included in Gnome means that the foundation is accepting your stance.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 13, 2005 0:10 UTC (Fri) by dberkholz (subscriber, #23346) [Link] How about DotGNU?
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 12, 2005 13:32 UTC (Thu) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link] This is a very interesting comment and it would be a shame if so few people get to see it. Maybe it could be developed into an LWN article.Instead of picking any one favorite language, why not make the environment language- independent? This is the point of Mono, is it not? The mono runtime can support more than C#. I believe there is already a Python-Mono bridge (there is definitely Python for .NET). Does anyone remember CORBA? I know, stop laughing! GNOME was originally conceived as a language-neutral, network-transparent "object environment". Why can't it be that again, with Mono?
GNOME language independence Posted May 12, 2005 21:20 UTC (Thu) by scripter (subscriber, #2654) [Link] The libraries are where most of the power resides for most programming languages, and without a community, the libraries don't get developed.
So, if my favorite language is lisp (it's not, by the way), but all of the libraries are developed in Python.PARROT (or Python.NET), then the philosophy of the Python community is going to "leak" into my lisp program, and it may not mix according to the lisp community's satisfaction.
There's another least-common-denominator problem. For example, with the .NET CLR, libraries have to use signed integers for compatibility between languages. C# supports unsigned (and even checked) integers, but VB does not. What if all of the libraries were written in VB.NET? It wouldn't be a good thing for security.
What about exceptions? If we have Pascal.NET or Pascal.PARROT, and try to have it call C# libraries that throw exceptions, what do you do? Force Pascal to have exceptions? Perhaps there are solutions to such problems.
Blending the philosophy of separate communities is difficult. People like their communities, and they like the distinct values of those communities. Forcing everyone to to walk like a duck, talk like a duck, and waddle like a duck isn't going to go over well, IMHO.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 14, 2005 15:19 UTC (Sat) by ohanssen (subscriber, #2761) [Link] Good point. CORBA was a good idea and still is (CORBA 3 also includes a component model compatible with EJB). And this is not the only kind of middleware which comes with language independence. Just look at database management systems.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 12, 2005 13:41 UTC (Thu) by hp (subscriber, #5220) [Link] Obviously I know my post sounds bad. However, the post is the truth, and that's how I decided what to say, not "what sounds good." Sometimes reality isn't what one would prefer.
Re: Python, Red Hat writes basically everything GUI in PyGTK: our installer, config tools, etc. - we have used PyGTK for years, it was the first viable language binding for GNOME. I would certainly support using it in GNOME.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 12, 2005 14:58 UTC (Thu) by liljencrantz (subscriber, #28458) [Link] I would very much like to see a solution where code included in the default Gnome desktop could be written in any language so long as there was a standard way to automatically generate high quality bindings for any other supported language.
I see three ways of doing this:
1) Make sure you can always generate C bindings, and use one of the binding generators to generate all other bindings. If I'm not mistaken, Java, Mono and Python should all be able to do this. Java has a bit of a head start because you should be able to wrap something around CNI to move from C++ to C and make some form of bridge that removes the idiotic Java style strings, and makes sure the Java GC interacts nicely other GCs and with non-GC languages.
2) Try using Corba/Orb or some messaging bus. This has been tried a large number of times, and it always ends up as a spectacular failure. But maybe a less ambitious approach, like specifying a communication protocol on how to talk to libraries over DBUS, would have a chance.
3) Pick the one true VM, and make everything run on it.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 12, 2005 21:47 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] "I would very much like to see a solution where code included in the default Gnome desktop could be written in any language..."Meaning, I have to have VMs for every godforsaken language always running because programs are cobbled together out of bits that individually need this one or that one, but of course never the same one. Any given program might need any mix of them, and who can keep track? No thanks. As it is, with C and C++ libraries, programs don't need any particular runtime support environment, and everybody (even the godforsaken) can call them. You can write C# programs, and I can ignore them. You can write Java programs, and I can ignore them too. I'm never in danger of needing to install a JVM just because, say, some bloated spreadsheet-cum-word processor project suddenly discovered a corporate need ignore all the low-impact database engines in C, and call up a slow and immature Java database instead.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 12, 2005 23:30 UTC (Thu) by liljencrantz (subscriber, #28458) [Link] I want software like Beagle, F-Spot and Tomboy to be integrated with my desktop. As for word processors, I use emacs and TeX, so I don't care what features Open office includes. But as far as I understand, Oo.o actually starts up much _faster_ in the new, evil mega-Java-bloatware version than it ever did before.
If you dont want new, cool and inovative software, but feel the need to use a slow, bloated C++-based office app like Oo.o 1.x, you and I clearly want different things out of our computers.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 13, 2005 6:18 UTC (Fri) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] If you want programs like Beagle, F-Spot and Tomboy integrated, by all means write programs like them in an unencumbered language, and integrate them. You certainly don't need one of these crippled languages to write cool and innovative software.If OO.o starts up faster than before, you can be certain it's not because they also have to start up a VM on top of everything else. I'm betting they don't start that up until you call something that needs it, or they start it in background so it looks like it's all up while that stuff is still flapping to get airborne. (BTW, doesn't Emacs define bloat any more?)
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 13, 2005 7:24 UTC (Fri) by liljencrantz (subscriber, #28458) [Link] I strongly belive that a modern high level language with garbage collection, object orientation, exceptions and such features make high level GUI software easier to write. Is there anything in Beagle that would be impossible to write in C? Of course not. But it would have taken more time, and given that time is finite, this means that the program would have less features, or maybe it wouldn't even have been released.
Allowing people to choose what language to code in allows them to be more productive, since different people like different languages, and different problems are suited to different languages. You are right that if we where to allow the core libraries to be written in Python, Java, Ruby and C#, they would be dog slow. To me, this means that the VMs have to be fixed to become leaner, not that those languages should be forbidden.
BTW, don't think that I don't like older languages like C or C++. I love C and I use it often. I just love the freedom to choose programming languages more.
As to your comments about emacs and bloat, emacs (CVS version 22.0.50) takes about 1.5 seconds to start up on my computer. This is obviously pretty bloated and far to long to be acceptable. I just tried starting OpenOffice (v1.1.2) a few times, it took about 4 seconds on average. So no, emacs does not _define_ bloat, and the fact that you ask this implies that you don't even use OpenOffice, but still you complain about what it does and how it does it.
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 13, 2005 13:22 UTC (Fri) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] Irony is lost on some people. Anyway, who's this "we"?
GNOME and high-level languages Posted May 13, 2005 16:11 UTC (Fri) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] By the way, C++ is unencumbered, supports OO anywhere it's useful, has exceptions that actually work (i.e. actually reduce the amount of error-handling code in your program, instead of multiplying it), and provides the benefits of garbage collection without its ... problems.
If you're talking about modern, though, you neglected to mention compile-time type inferencing. The MLs have it, Haskell has it, C++ has it, Java and C# don't. (What good is it, anyway? It enables writing libraries that are more powerful than is possible in weaker languages.) As modernity goes, Java 1.5 and C# are stuck at about 1991; Java 1 was about 1986.
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