[Ffmpeg-devel] SVN dump

[Rich Felker]

On Wed, Apr 18, 2007 at 10:06:44AM -0400, Dave Dodge wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 18, 2007 at 09:55:01AM -0400, Rich Felker wrote:
> > Mozilla is a Windows project. In any case my comments stand; a program
> > written in Python is inherently nonportable as long as the interpreter
> > is.
> 
> True.
> 
> Do you have Java support on your target system?

Of course not. Java is even less portable than Python, and until
recently (maybe even still despite Sun's publicity stunts..?)
non-free.

> > And writing your program in a RAD tool/prototyping/script language
> > does not speak well for its quality.
> 
> Not sure I entirely agree with that.  For example if the program
> needed to do a _lot_ of string processing, it would probably be easier
> and clearer to use some higher-level language than plain C.

HLL and RAD tool are different things. There are real HLLs like caml,
lisp, scheme, haskel, lua, etc. designed by people who understand
computer _science_. Then there are sloppy RAD tools like visual basic,
python, perl, ruby, etc.

> Aside: it could be worse; one of the main "competitors" to Mercurial
> and GIT is Darcs.  While it has the best (or at least the most
> interesting) design theory behind its operation, it ends up being slow
> for large projects, apparently has some corner cases where it goes
> into a near-infinite loop, and is implemented in Haskell -- making its
> code mostly impenetrable to the average programmer who might be
> interested in working on it.

:) :)

Rich