[PyKDE] kde language poll

[Jim Bublitz]

On Wednesday 04 October 2006 23:48, John Layt wrote:
> On Thursday 05 October 2006 09:48, Lee Braiden wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > One of the KDE devs is running a poll about which language people would
> > prefer to be "blessed" as the officially supported KDE scripting
> > language. Currently, it's neck-and-neck between ruby and python, which
> > makes no sense from all the statistics I've seen, so I figured that you
> > guys haven't heard about it yet.
> >
> > I don't have any major objections to Ruby, but I prefer python, if only
> > for the statement by ruby devs that that Ruby will require years more
> > work to be unicode-compliant.
> >
> > So anyway... might want to vote, even if you're a ruby person hanging out
> > at pykde ;)
> >
> > http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/2426
>
> There's quite a polite on-going discussion about this in a few places, and
> while I'm a Python person myself, I'm with Boudewain on this one
> (http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi/software/erno.html?seemore=y), the
> key point that should be made is that the so-called scripting languages are
> suitable for application developement and inclusion in KDE main modues in
> their own right and should not be seen as poor cousins in KDE.
>
> Regardless of your opinion, just remember to keep it polite and reasoned,
> and that even if a choice is made that you don't agree with, I don't think
> PyKDE is going away any time soon :-)

I tried to post to the original discussion, and also to Boudewijn's, but I 
haven't had any luck (it hasn't been a good day all around). Anyway, what I 
posted there (or tried to) was this:

------------------------

I have a vested interest in this, since I've been maintaining PyKDE for the 
last 4 or 5 years (my name is on every file in the kdebindings-python-PyKDE 
stuff too, except for anything autotools related, or PyQt or sip).

I couldn't agree more. In fact I was going to post something similar to the 
PyKDE list (couldn't register to post at Scott's blog for some reason), but 
you beat me to it. This shouldn't be about a particular language winning, but 
about making KDE scriptable for any language where someone cares to try, as 
well as not making KDE dependent on any single language or group of 
languages. I don't want Python scripting if it means KDE has Python 
dependencies that a lot of people don't want, and it can be done without 
dependencies.

The only place where I've recently begun to disagree is the part about 
embedding scripting languages in KDE. From where I sit (and from the way KDE 
is designed), it's much easier right now to embed KDE applications into 
Python. But that doesn't mean it's still easy - I didn't post to the PyKDE 
list earlier because it would have been a rant about the KDE application I'm 
working on scripting for.

--------------------------

Jim