Thanks for the comments! Those were some great thoughts.

As I said in my original post, it was geared more toward discussion
material - and I'm very pleased that Henrik and Vlad decided to speak.
There really is no right answer to the language question, no perfect tool.
My opinions of Python still stand. I've never felt comfortable with the way
that Python has wiggled its way into becoming a Linux dependency,
especially given its status as a "de-facto" language with no official
standard that can be backward compatible. It is a fact that dynamically
typed languages are somewhat unpredictable in comparison to statically
typed. Python is not a bad language, but it has what an "old school"
programmer like myself would consider to be several flaws. For example, I
despise garbage collection with extreme prejudice. Flaws in the garbage
collector can lead to memory leaks that cannot be corrected until a new
runtime is issued upstream, offering developers using the language a
freaking nightmare in the meantime.


> Oh, and Microsoft is planning to open source and port .NET to Linux,
please everybody hold the 'M$ is Cancer' comments for a sec, C# is a pretty
decent language for application development, >IMO it blows Java out of the
water and it might have its uses.

I wouldn't hold your breath on that one. C# has not been part of an
official standard since version 2. Versions 3 and 4 are not covered,
except by whatever "half a loaf" terms that Microsoft decides to offer.
Even so, what has been released as an ISO standard with an explicit patent
grant is a piecemeal standard of version 2 with several critical libraries
missing from being a full cross-platform implementation. As for this new
"open" version, I'll believe it when I see it. Microsoft can be as much of
a "patent monger" as Oracle is with Java.

In my mind, neither is worthy of trust, unless they want to place the
current version of C# or Java under the auspices of the ISO/Ecma with an
explicit RAND grant. As it stands both languages are a lawsuit waiting to
happen.

Thanks for the thoughts!
T.J.





On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 9:17 PM, Vlad <2389vbl@???> wrote:

> Hi, Henrik
>
> I think that you nailed a lot of the problems still plaguing Python on the
> head, however OCaml and Modula are a bit obscure and lack the extensive
> libraries that Python brings to the table, moreover a lot of people know
> python, it is used extensively in other distros, and it is a relatively
> easy language to learn, I took a look at OCaml, and while it had some very
> neat features I really don't think that it is something that many people
> would like to learn or use.
> This is of course just a first impression based on a cursory look at it, I
> might be wrong, I am kind of curious about OCaml.
>
> We should also consider Go and Julia IMO.
>
> Oh, and Microsoft is planning to open source and port .NET to Linux,
> please everybody hold the 'M$ is Cancer' comments for a sec, C# is a pretty
> decent language for application development, IMO it blows Java out of the
> water and it might have its uses.
>
> On December 6, 2014 5:01:35 AM EET, Hendrik Boom <hendrik@???>
> wrote:
>
>> It appears to be T.J. Duchene who said, in an article entitled "[Dng]
>> More ranting thoughts [Re: Something wrong with devuan mail list?",
>> which I can't reply to directly:
>>
>> Lastly, I think that writing system management tools in Python is a
>>> terrible idea. Python is a language with "duck tying", which means that
>>> a lot of errors are only detectable when the software is being run on
>>> your setup. One sight change and "klabooey" - errors to STDOUT. I can
>>> certainly think of other reasons to dislike systemd, but the fact that
>>> the management tools are written in Python pretty much tops that
>>> list. It's not an anti-Python rant, anymore than I hate Perl. I
>>> just do not feel that Python is the right tool for the system jobs,
>>> given that it: a) is duck-typed, b) has no fixed standard, and
>>> c)
>>> versions of Python are incompatible.
>>>
>>
>> This seems to be a coplaint against languages tht are not statically
>> typed rather than against duck-typing. You need a conplete review of
>> the entire code with a static type-check to get a lot of errors caught
>> without haveing to encounter them during execution. Duck-typing itself
>> does not stand in the way -- you can statially check a duck-typed
>> language as long as it requires the progrmmer to declare the types of
>> enough identifers.
>>
>> What you seem to want is a run-time secure, typed language.
>>
>> May I suggest a look at some compiled, garbage-collected languages for
>> scripting? Two I like are Modula 3 and OCaml. The people at Jane
>> Street have succeeded in configuring their OCaml for use as a scripting
>> language -- compiled on demand by a suitable #! line at the start of
>> the script file. Since they deal in finance (and I suspect
>> autamated
>> trading, though I don't really know), they have severe
>> security requirements.
>>
>> Scheme is perhaps also a possiblity. Besides being the official
>> (but not statically typed) scripting language for the GNU project,
>> there's also Typed Rackeet, a completely independently implemented
>> statically typed version of the langauge.
>>
>> Any of these would beat shell scripting for reliability. Some might
>> even be convenient.
>>
>> -- hendrik
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
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>> Dng@???
>> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
>>
>>
> --
> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
>
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