Re: gEDA-user: interesting links

["Samuel A. Falvo II" <sam.falvo@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 8/30/07, Ales Hvezda <ahvezda@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >Nobody said there was.  But if you're going to undermine any and every
>
>         Okay, so what is with this statement:
>
> > ... I have to cast my vote for OCaml or Haskel ...

The English language is filled with vaguarities, which is the source
of much humor, but also even understanding.  This is one of them.  To
cast a vote means that you have a preference for something.  There
need not be an official ballot, nor any judiciary committee to ensure
fairness, etc.  Indeed, all a ballot does is make "casting a vote" a
tangible, quantifyable activity.

>         seems like you are trying to vote for something?  Again this

Only if taken literally.

>         Btw, since we are talking about OCaml and Haskel, please post a
> URL to a "non-trival real world free software" code base written in
> either one of these languages that I can evaluate.  Thanks.

Since I do not know what you mean by "non-trivial" or "real-world", I
must guess, and probably set my standards pretty low.

For Haskell, the best known is Darcs, a revision control tool you've
undoubtedly heard about.  There is a large number of developers who,
based on mailing list activity, make contributions on a weekly,
sometimes daily, basis.  To toot my own horn, I'm preparing to release
the next version of my C Unit Testing package, which is now written in
Haskell (converted from C).

For OCaml, I did a quick Freshmeat search and came up with these.  I
do not know these programs, but after filtering out things that I
considered "trivial" (language bindings, wrappers for other things,
etc), I determined that each of these constitutes a non-trivial
application.  By the looks of each project, they each also appear to
be maintained by multiple contributors, and are the kinds of programs
that one would use every day.

* http://home.gna.org/cameleon/
* http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~stse/javac/
* http://www.mldonkey.org/
* http://www.drugphish.ch/~jonny/cca.html
* http://www.mtasc.org/

>         This list is *not* about "hypothetical discussions".  As far as

Then, I would like to suggest that you clamp down on EVERYONE who even
dares ask a what-if or wouldn't-it-be-nice question, regardless of the
topic.  I note that this is not the first time that you've responded
to me in such a manner since I've been on this list, that you have
singled ME out and slammed me for going off on a tangent, no matter
how far.  And, yet, others on this list do not seem to get the same
treatment.

> I know no core developer is planning on writing/rewriting any tools in
> Forth (which when suggested put a smile on my face :-), OCaml, Haskel,
> or whatever.

That's fine.

Nobody said that they should.  And, nobody expects anyone else to bend
to their chosen languages either.

What was being discussed was, IN THE EVENT of a ground-up rewrite,
what language would you choose, and why?  At least, that is how I
interpreted the discussion.

I mean, even now, there is a dialog about C++ versus other languages.
Why is this so relevant?  My theory is that it's relevant *ONLY*
because GCC ships with a C++ compiler as well as a C compiler.  The
languages are fundamentally different, but because they're bundled
together, you can kind of think of them as the same basic language.

Yet, I had to install Scheme to get gEDA installed last time; none of
my boxes had scheme environments by default.  Some contributions are
written in Perl -- none of my boxes had (a particularly recent) Perl
installed by default (I'm a Python guy).

True to form, nobody dares ask, "What language should I write this
tool in?"  That's fine.  But what if someone DOES ask such a question
(say, out of courtesy)?  Will such a question be shot down on the
basis of being so wildly off-topic that it's TABOO to discuss on the
list?

>         However, if you are going to write an free software EDA tool in
> any language (of your choice), then by all means, discuss here to your
> heart's content (though geda-dev might be a better choice and it was
> probably a better choice for my original post too, oops).

Frankly, I feel so bad about this incident that I no longer have any
plans to support gEDA development because of the way I felt I've been
treated here.  I no longer desire to contribute to, or even use, the
project (I was planning on working on buses when it came time to draw
up schematics for my Kestrel 2 project).

Why should you care?  Well, strictly speaking, you shouldn't -- it's
my decision.  But the fact remains that politicizing and playing
favorites amongst the folks here will drive users AWAY from gEDA.  I
can clearly see the need to put your foot down on gEDA-dev.  But on
gEDA-users?

I may not be a "core" developer of gEDA.  But I *am* a developer of
other things.  You just don't see them.  I was just offering my input,
based on my experience with the languages and tools that I've used, in
the hopes that it might be useful to someone.  If nobody cares about
OCaml or Haskell, that's fine.  I wasn't even proposing that anyone
change languages; by "casting my vote," I was just saying how I would
do something if it were up to me.  There CANNOT possibly be any harm
in THAT, can there?

A discussion that should have taken two, maybe three messages, has now
exploded into me effectively standing trial for my contribution.  In
all honesty, I really do feel that I'm being singled out.

-- 
Samuel A. Falvo II


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