Re: Preferred language?

On 27 March 2015 at 09:39, Sergio Tortosa Benedito <[email protected]> wrote:
> Well I'm writing this e-mail because I want to know which languages do you
> know/prefer since I might write some tools.
>
> *Python: pretty much industry standard
> *Ruby: meant to be fun, higher DSL capabilites
> *Lua: fast,small and also DSL capable (with some trickery)
> And now some other which are not so known but interesting:
> *Nim: Python + Pascal with the highest grade of metaprogamming I have ever
> seen
> *Crystal: Attempts to be compiled ruby.
> The interesting thing about crystal is it's typing  system which is a mix
> between dynamic and static, it's dynamic because var=1; var="hello"
> works,it's static because the variable's types are known at compile time.
>
> As anyone may infer, one feature I find interesting it's metaprogramming so
> we can write a small DSL (Domain Specific Language) and simplify code.
>
> Now my opinion: From the list the one less suited for the job it's Lua (it
> lacks some syntax sugar,also lacks standard libraries with support for some
> basic operations, and even though they exist, they are external). Python's
> limitations in metaprogramming may make a disadvantage.

If my memory serves me right Ruby is not even included in our default install.

We have tools written in Python, Bash and a little C.

I do not recommend writing any new tools in Bash. If anything, we'd
prefer to port the existing tools away from Bash, even.

Aitor Iturri once started an effort in this direction for porting into Lua:
http://github.com/gobolinux/Lua-GoboLinux
But this codebase is outdated. Aitor recently mentioned he was
thinking about updating this code, but updating+completing the port is
a lot of work.

Lua would be easy to include in the base install because it's so small
and light on dependencies. You'll need extra modules in order to do
useful stuff with it, though.

So, in practical terms for potential inclusion in core GoboLinux, even
though it's not my favorite language, Python would be your best bet.

-- Hisham