Re: Preferred language?

On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 08:46:50PM -0300, Hisham wrote:
> 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 But this codebase is outdated.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 a great improvement over bash!
 
> 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.

Easy now, at least as I parse your Fosdem talk on Luarocks :-)

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

Widely used, and batteries included.

Joel
 
> -- Hisham
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-- 
Joel Roth