[Geany-devel] OT replace c++ - Re: project build dialog - Re: [ANNOUNCE] gproject - yet another geany project plugin

[Lex Trotman]

On 11 June 2010 02:15, Nick Treleaven <nick.treleaven at btinternet.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:48:39 +0200
> Jiří Techet <techet at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > I agree it helps, but are there really no successful widespread
>> > languages that didn't have corporate backing?
>> >

If success = widespread use then python and php?

>>
>> Unfortunately we're not living in the 70's or 80's, where the best had
>> a chance, and there's a lot of software written in the mainstream
>
> I think that's a bit pessimistic.

I too think that it is possible for the best to succeed without
corporate backing, but also for "not the best" to succeed with
corporate backing.  I'd list C (AT&T), Java (Sun), C# (MS),
Javascript (Netscape) in that category, and funny, but they all look
much the same, maybe the corporate suit has been replaced by the
corporate braces { }.
>
>> languages. These applications won't get rewritten just because some
>> better language appeared (or do you plan to rewrite geany in D? :-).
>> In the last 15 years the only successful languages were those where
>> some big company was behind (Java, C#).
>

Never re-write whole applications, see KDE 4 for most of the reasons.

> It's not normally a good idea to rewrite applications. But new
> applications could be written in a language like D or Go (obviously).
>
> Any successful language will need to interface well with C.
>

True, its the common interface language between all the others.

Which brings up mixed language systems, I've seen a very successful
(closed source) system that uses Python as the front end for GUI and
scripting where dynamic characteristics are very helpful, and C++ as
the backend for the crunching where static characteristics make for
good code.

>> >> And it's fast. I spend one hour a day just
>> >> compiling with C++ code.
>> >
>> > A D developer says it's faster than Go at compiling, and it has
>> > templates:
>> > http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=digitalmars.D&artnum=108831
>>
>> Well, it really depends if he was compiling a single file or a library
>
> The link says:
> "So the go compiler compiles 120KLOC in 9.23 seconds. I got curious so I
> just tested dmd against Phobos (88KLOC). That takes 1.24 seconds on my
> laptop."
>
> Phobos is D's standard library, and includes templates quite a bit.
>
>> with many includes. What makes the compilation of C++ slow is that it
>> has to parse the same headers again and again every time they are
>> included (and all the includes inside the includes). This is
>> eliminated in go. If D uses includes, then it will be slow for big
>> projects too.
>
> It doesn't use includes per say, but compiler-generated .di files. C++
> parsing is slow anyway because of templates.

Yeah, just try using some of the Boost libraries heavily :-(

>
> (I think both D and Go have ways to speed up compilation further).

The reason I originally said that I wouldn't get into a language
discussion is because as entertaining and intellectually stimulating
as such discussions are (I subscribe to LtU
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ ) in reality most of the factors which
control the selection of languages are non-technical, tool
availability, programmer experience and training costs for switching,
and good old fear (will I be blamed for a project failing if I try
something new).

To give the discussion a Geany flavour (just for the look of it you
know, so Enrico doesn't complain we are too OT ;-) this is why Geany
should not impose specific workflows or prevent them, we don't know
what the "next big thing" will be.

And to answer Jiri's question on a previous post, use of functional
languages in anger, if you are in Europe the majority of your phone
calls are handled by a functional language, Erlang, which Ericsson use
to program their exchanges.  Large projects, real time, high
reliability, fault tolerance, concurrency ... not a bad list.

Cheers
Lex
>
> Regards,
> Nick
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