From: Aredridel <aredridel@...>
Date: 2003-11-08T03:47:14+09:00
Subject: Re: Power of Interpreted Languages

> > We all know that scripting is great for good many tasks, but could
> > scripting make for a good word processor, for instance? How about a
> > Desktop Enviornment or Window Manager?
> 
> No -- too slow.

A counter-argument: Look at SawFish.  It's critical sections are written
in C, using GTK and GDK to do drawing routines. However, the logic of
the window manager is written in Scheme/REP. Sawfish is also incredibly
flexible beacuse of this, Scheme being as dynamic as it is. 

I don't think that being interpreted makes this possible, it is being
dynamic.  That said, dynamic is usually a feature of interpreted
languages, not compiled. (The most notable exception I can think of
being Objective C.)

Sawfish is plenty fast -- faster than Metacity, often, which is written
in C alone.

I'd love to see many apps written in Ruby/Gnome2, or at least large
sections. A word processor with the logic written in Ruby would be easy
to hack, easy to fix. Same for other apps. In my experience, it's fast
enough.

(This is why Emacs is popular, too...)

Ari