[Geany-Devel] Let's use Vala
Steven Blatnick
steve8track at xxxxx
Mon Nov 11 23:35:58 UTC 2013
Just to elaborate my "sources" ;-)
Personal Experience:
I suppose I should elaborate that the added complexity could be a
result of having a mixture of old and new languages by trying to get
them to work together so as not to lose all legacy features while
migrating.
Without trying to hurt any company's reputation, I work or worked at
a company where the main code base was perl, but now they prefer
Java. They couldn't just remove all of the legacy code, so getting
the two languages to work together makes the code complicated. The
other problem is they have adopted several different frameworks over
the years, from JSF, JSP, to GWT running on various different
services from apache (for the perl), tomcat4, tomcat6 (at the same
time!), etc. This may not match up well with vala, since it appears
vala is much more c++ compatible. Also, this project is a web
service, which requires migrating between the technologies without
downtime and without losing any existing data, introducing it's own
complexity to the migration.
Basically the problem I see is that with each new direction (caused
by changing opinions with new developers over the years, each with
their own biases), we end up with a *technicolor-dream-coat of
convoluted technology*. I saw this at other jobs too, where each
new pet feature/project introduced more dependencies and required
different know-how than each of the prior work. While the projects
work, they've become very complex with all the passing between the
various architectures/structures/technologies. Scrambled eggs, if
you will.
Gedit:
When gedit changed from using GTK2 to GTK3 between gedit2 and
gedit3, they introduced some regressions. They also required a
complete rewrite of all plugins others had developed for the
editor. While the new plugin infrastructure is better, I
re-evaluated what editor I was using because if I had to rewrite
them anyway, then maybe I would do so for another editor. Hence why
I am writing plugins to use with geany :-) I also noticed that
gedit started to use more memory.
Gnome3/Unity:
Not only did they re-write everything, abandon their user-base, and
upset a lot of people, myself included, but they also introduced
many regressions and lost a lot of features. I realize we don't
intend to change the principles of geany like they did, but making
large code changes is bound to lead to us at least considering
alternative ways of doing things, which in Gnome3's case wasn't
always appreciated by the users.
Really, the *Gnome Civil War* between the programmers and the users,
as I like to call it, has been a real sore spot for me and for
linux-kind ;-)
I realize these are not identical to switching to vala, but I present it
as food for thought anyway.
I guess my concern is that for each time a project changes direction,
the code risks introducing regressions, losing/alienating users, and
requiring more dependencies.
Not to get too political, especially since this may be lost on some
audiences, but not all "Change" is good change. If we make any drastic
changes, I suggest starting a new project so we don't essentially
overwrite a current one like the Gnome guys did.
All that said, it sounds like nobody is planning that big of a change (I
hope).
Thanks,
Steve
On 11/11/2013 03:31 PM, Matthew Brush wrote:
> On 13-11-11 08:38 AM, Steven Blatnick wrote:
>> [snip]
>>
>> Changing languages almost always adds complexity and my humble opinion
>> is that it should be avoided, but I also don't know enough about vala to
>> say how easy it would be to include it in development.
>>
>
> [citation needed]
>
> Like provide an example of a past experience/observation where a
> project switched from a similarly low-level language to a similarly
> high-level language where it added (rather than severely reduced)
> complexity.
>
> Cheers,
> Matthew Brush
> _______________________________________________
> Devel mailing list
> Devel at lists.geany.org
> https://lists.geany.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devel
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.geany.org/pipermail/devel/attachments/20131111/94b97bec/attachment-0001.html>
More information about the Devel
mailing list