I would ask this about the FOSS community, but that would probably require a complicated answer.<BR><BR>Which direction will gnome be going in? .net or java? Also, have they made anything using .net or java yet? I did a search, and I found a some articles from ~2003 about Miguel de Icaza being interested in .net. It would be nice to know what has happened since then.
Which direction has gnome gone? .net? java?
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Metasyntactic
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The GNOME libraries were always in C, are in C, and will remain in C forever, amen.<BR><BR>But applications are a different story. Writing a GUI app in C simply sucks (I know this from personal experience). Thus, lots of popular applications written for the GNOME desktop are in C#/Mono. However, they are not an "official" part of the GNOME desktop, primarily because RedHat -- a major sponsor of GNOME -- is leery of Mono due to some unspecified legal issue.<BR><BR>However, RedHat has recently started distributing Mono in Fedora, which many interpret as a signal that they are starting to accept Mono. Thus it is not unreasonable to suppose that Mono and C# will become an official part of the GNOME desktop in the next few years.<BR><BR>As for java? I can't think of a single popular java app written for GNOME. At this point, I would say that turning GNOME to java is a lost cause.
A whole lot of GNOME applications are now being written in Python, owing to the awesome, complete, and high-quality implementation of Python language bindings for GTK+, HAL/DBUS, GnomeVFS, and other GNOME libraries. It's <I>shockingly easy</I> to write GNOME apps in Python.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> A whole lot of GNOME applications are now being written in Python </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Which is incredibly annoying. Python apps are noticably slower and use more memory than their compiled counterparts. Seems like a step backwards to me.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Nothinman:<BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> A whole lot of GNOME applications are now being written in Python </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Which is incredibly annoying. Python apps are noticably slower and use more memory than their compiled counterparts. Seems like a step backwards to me. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Yeah, cause what we're really hurting for, with cheap dual-core 64-bit CPU's and cheap RAM, is a bunch of buggy C programs that run really fast and use a few less pages of memory.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> Yeah, cause what we're really hurting for, with cheap dual-core 64-bit CPU's and cheap RAM, is a bunch of buggy C programs that run really fast and use a few less pages of memory. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>What's cheap to you isn't cheap to everyone. My main machine is old, but it's not that old, I'm currently using dual 1.2Ghz Tbirds with 1G of memory and lots of new apps seem slow and use too much memory. And everytime I price the hardware required for an upgrade (at least a new motherboard, memory and videocard) I come up with a price a lot higher than what I want to spend right now. Sure, I technically could afford it but I have other things that I'd rather spend the money on right now. And that's not even taking into account the rest of the world, in many other countries the cost of a decently new machine could equal several month's or a year's worth of salary. <BR><BR>People are already complaining about Linux being bloated, why make things worse?
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by unterbear:<BR>Yeah, cause what we're really hurting for, with cheap dual-core 64-bit CPU's and cheap RAM, is a bunch of buggy C programs that run really fast and use a few less pages of memory. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Thanks to this attitude -- which until a year ago was quite widespread in the GNOME/Gtk world -- GNOME is slower and uses more memory than WinXP or KDE despite having far fewer features. Assuming that everyone uses a 6-month-old machine is an excellent way to help your competition. "Hey, user! Switch to our desktop environment! It's slower and buggier than what you use today, and doesn't have the features you need, and as soon as you turn on the web browser your disk will swapping like it's in a swinger club! I'm telling you, it's a great experience!"<BR><BR>But fortunately, a number of GNOME devs realized what was happening, and have been spending a lot of effort to trim GNOME's fat. If only Firefox devs were to catch the efficiency bug...
Neither. There is interest from different people in both camps. Gnome has, for better or worse, always been known for it's wide range of language bindings.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Nothinman:<BR>Which is incredibly annoying. Python apps are noticably slower and use more memory than their compiled counterparts. Seems like a step backwards to me. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Heh, two of the slowest and most memory consuming applications for GNOME, Nautilus and Evolution, are written in C. And let's not get started on gnome-cups-icon.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by whiprush:<BR>Heh, two of the slowest and most memory consuming applications for GNOME, Nautilus and Evolution, are written in C. And let's not get started on gnome-cups-icon. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Yup. I'd put OpenOffice.org in that category too. (Although it might actually be C++, I don't remember.)<BR><BR>And what do these applications spend most of their time doing? Well, when they're not leaking memory or crashing, they're mostly sitting idle. I know, I know, they do lots of good work for us, mostly in quick bursts, but then they have to wait on the silly user to read the next email or figure out what sentence to write next, etc.<BR><BR>So I'm pretty happy to trade off some runtime speed if I can get a program that was easier to write and debug, so it's likely to have fewer bugs and security problems down the road. <BR><BR>Anyway, my initial post in this thread was a bit snide, and I apologize for that.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Yeah, cause what we're really hurting for, with cheap dual-core 64-bit CPU's and cheap RAM, is a bunch of buggy C programs that run really fast and use a few less pages of memory. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Who mentioned C? Python is noticably slower than other safe, managed languages which offer many of the same benefits that Python does. <BR><BR>Hell, Python's slower than Java.
iiiinteresting.. I didn't know that.<BR><BR>Java can be pretty fast, though. When the JIT compiler has time to do its thing, and gets enough looks at the same code, it's supposed to be just about as fast as native C/C++ code. GUI code, on the other hand, seems to be another matter entirely.<BR><BR>Do you know of other specific examples of safe languages that are faster than Python? Ruby's been getting a lot of attention lately, but I don't know anything about how fast it runs.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by unterbear:<BR>Ruby's been getting a lot of attention lately, but I don't know anything about how fast it runs. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Ruby is pretty damn slow. Slower then Python, I'm sure. Probably a lot slower, but I've never benchmarked it.
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<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by unterbear:<br>Yup. I'd put OpenOffice.org in that category too. (Although it might actually be C++, I don't remember.) </div>
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<br><br>OO is Java. Slow like Azureus -- View image here: http://episteme.meincmagazine.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif -- I never had much experience with Python apps, but I suspect the upcoming Perl 6 would be faster (a complete rewrite, yikes).
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<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by unterbear:<br>Yup. I'd put OpenOffice.org in that category too. (Although it might actually be C++, I don't remember.) </div>
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<br><br>OO is Java. Slow like Azureus -- View image here: http://episteme.meincmagazine.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif -- I never had much experience with Python apps, but I suspect the upcoming Perl 6 would be faster (a complete rewrite, yikes).
Generally, java on a recent jvm with jit will run about as fast as c++ compiled with g++ (of course, Java will use several times more memory than the c++ program, but that's another story). Pure C can (if you spend enough time) be marginally faster than c++ and java.<BR>Mono is currently several times slower than c++ or java (it's a problem with Mono, not the underlying idea of .net; Microsoft's .net vm is almost as fast as java).<BR>And python, perl, php, and ruby are generally <I>1-2 orders of magnitude</I> slower than java or c++ -- with some notable exceptions (such as perl's blazingly fast string processing). Of the four, ruby is generally the slowest; perl and python have comparable overall performance, although python is faster at object-oriented tasks (e.g. instantiate 1000 new objects) and perl is faster if you code in the procedural style. Psyco speeds up python significantly, but it's still nowhere as fast as Sun's jvm.<BR><BR>Of course if by "python program" you mean "a couple hundred lines of python that delegate all the actual work to a C library" then yes, "python" can be fast.<BR><BR>As for fast, safe languages? If you don't like java or mono, you might want to have a look at common lisp, ocaml, and haskell. They are all at the very worst only 2-3 times slower than c++, and (at least in the case of lisp) can be very fun to program in.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Chunghau:<BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by unterbear:<BR>Yup. I'd put OpenOffice.org in that category too. (Although it might actually be C++, I don't remember.) </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>OO is Java. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR> The majority is C++
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<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by shurik:<br>As for fast, safe languages? If you don't like java or mono, you might want to have a look at common lisp, ocaml, and haskell. They are all at the very worst only 2-3 times slower than c++, and (at least in the case of lisp) can be very fun to program in. </div>
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<br><br>++<br><br>In general, things just get slower as features get added. More loops, more checks, more reads, more writes... Might as well let the developers use what works best for them and deliver stable software. Yea, it sucks to have to upgrade your hardware to run Eclipse or even Firefox, but things like that get slower over time because you want all those features. If you don't need a fancy calendar/contacts/email app like Evolution, then use pine -- View image here: http://episteme.meincmagazine.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif --
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<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by shurik:<br>As for fast, safe languages? If you don't like java or mono, you might want to have a look at common lisp, ocaml, and haskell. They are all at the very worst only 2-3 times slower than c++, and (at least in the case of lisp) can be very fun to program in. </div>
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<br><br>++<br><br>In general, things just get slower as features get added. More loops, more checks, more reads, more writes... Might as well let the developers use what works best for them and deliver stable software. Yea, it sucks to have to upgrade your hardware to run Eclipse or even Firefox, but things like that get slower over time because you want all those features. If you don't need a fancy calendar/contacts/email app like Evolution, then use pine -- View image here: http://episteme.meincmagazine.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif --
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<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Chunghau:<br>OO is Java. Slow like Azureus -- View image here: http://episteme.meincmagazine.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif -- I never had much experience with Python apps, but I suspect the upcoming Perl 6 would be faster (a complete rewrite, yikes). </div>
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<br>OOo is 95% c++. AFAIK, the only part of it that uses a significant amount of java is the database tool.<br>Perl6 is expected to be faster than Perl5 because it will be using a new vm (Parrot, which is actually language-agnostic -- you can run python, or ruby, or lisp, or whatever else you feel like on it). At the moment, Parrot is ~5 times faster than Perl5's vm, and hopefully by the time Perl6 is done, it will be faster still.
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<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Chunghau:<br>OO is Java. Slow like Azureus -- View image here: http://episteme.meincmagazine.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif -- I never had much experience with Python apps, but I suspect the upcoming Perl 6 would be faster (a complete rewrite, yikes). </div>
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<br>OOo is 95% c++. AFAIK, the only part of it that uses a significant amount of java is the database tool.<br>Perl6 is expected to be faster than Perl5 because it will be using a new vm (Parrot, which is actually language-agnostic -- you can run python, or ruby, or lisp, or whatever else you feel like on it). At the moment, Parrot is ~5 times faster than Perl5's vm, and hopefully by the time Perl6 is done, it will be faster still.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> Heh, two of the slowest and most memory consuming applications for GNOME, Nautilus and Evolution, are written in C. And let's not get started on gnome-cups-icon. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>I never really noticed Nautilus being slow, although the SMB support uses a lot of CPU for no good reason, and looking now it's memory usage is less than 20M, not great but could be worse. But I'm going to even touch Evolution, it's it's own can of worms...
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