Re: Re[4]: [stellation-res] Proposed Changes in Bugzilla (#31581 )

["Mark C. Chu-Carroll" <mcc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2003-02-12 at 17:27, Marco Qualizza wrote:
> > On Wed, 2003-02-12 at 16:38, Marco Qualizza wrote:
> >> >> Note: I exclude Javascript or, pardon me, ECMAscript, from the category of
> >> >> scripting languages. I worked with it, briefly, and would far rather use
> >> > VB
> >> >> if only those two were available (not saying much!). I'm still a Python
> >> >> newbie, but my limited experience with it has been very positive. It would
> >> >> be interesting to hear other suggestions; please consider ease-of-learning
> >> >> as well as expressive power and support for domain-specific vocabularies.
> >> 
> >> Out of curiousity, what don't you like about JavaScript?
> 
> > For me, just about everything.
> 
> > To set the stage a bit... I'm an obsessive when it comes to programming
> > languages. I read PL specs *for fun*. I can very literally program in
> > over 100 programming languages.
> 
> *rofl* Well, I definitely can't claim to have the same expertise as you -- I'm
> limited to a relatively paltry 20 or so, and of those only a handful are in
> "good order" (so to speak).  Accordingly, I'll accept your criticisms of its
> spec. and relative coherence without challenge, but...

Well, you know, I never claimed that I was *sane* or anything. In fact,
I argue that the defining characteristic of the kind of person who gets
a PhD and is successful in  research is seriously obsessive behavior. 

> <snip>
> 
> > It's just a miserable mess to deal with - it manages to combine the
> > worst properties of class-based languages with the worst properties
> > of prototype-based languages, while providing no advantages of any kind
> > over either.
> 
> >From a user perspective (ie/ programming with the language, instead of trying
> to write a compiler for it), that hasn't been my experience with it.  I've had
> a few years of experience with it (approx. 8) and so I might have become
> insensitive to its problems...  I don't like the fact that defining multiple
> functions with the same name doesn't create an array of functions, but other
> than that, I find it really expressive and powerful... 

I find things like figuring out the inheritance behaviors of things to
be very painful. In the context where I envision using a scripting
language (that is, attaching behaviors to repository artifacts
and meta-artifacts), being able to easily understand, predict, and
control the inheritance behavior is crucial.

> > And that's just one example of where it goes seriously wrong. There
> > are others...
> 
> > There are quite a variety of scripty languages that are highly
> > compatible with Java: NetRexx, Kawa, Jython, Beanshell, several
> > smalltalks variants, the BSF, and DynamicJava, just for starters.
> 
> Smalltalk-based scripting languages?  You wouldn't happen to have any URLs
> handy, would you? :-)

There's a comprehensive list of languages that work with the JVM at
http://grunge.cs.tu-berlin.de/~tolk/vmlanguages.html. There
are a bunch of smalltalks there. I tried out Bistro a year or so ago,
and it was pretty darned nifty. It's not something that I would
seriously propose as the major scripting language for Stellation - as
much as I like Smalltalk, it's not what most of our users will be
comfortable with. 

My own inclination is something along the lines of beanshell or dynamic
java: something with syntax very close to Java, but which can be used to
whip together light-weight interpreted scripts.

	-Mark

-- 
Mark Craig Chu-Carroll,  IBM T.J. Watson Research Center  
*** The Stellation project: Advanced SCM for Collaboration
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