GNOME and high-level languages [LWN.net]

GNOME and high-level languages

Posted May 12, 2005 13:32 UTC (Thu) by jwb (guest, #15467)
In reply to: GNOME and high-level languages by dhess
Parent article: A new Harmony Project

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?

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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 (guest, #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.