Re: Programmers requested for dictionary

On Fri, 27 Oct 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> Hmm... I propose we use Perl for this project, since Perl is very
> well-suited for lotsa text-processing, such as we have here, and it's also
> interpreted, which means that Perl programs are cross-platform by default.
> Of course, parts of an implementation may use platform-specific features,
> but if we carefully keep ourselves to the platform-independent libraries,
> we should be OK.
I don't think Perl is really suited to anything larger than ten-liners... That's
why I chose Python for Kura.

>
> The drawback is, Windows doesn't come with Perl by default, so the
> Windowers among us would have to spare enough space to install Perl...
> (and no, I *don't* suggest using Perl-to-C translators because I suspect
> that'd be heavily POSIX-biased, and would easily break under Windows.)
>
Now that gw-basic has been kicked out (NT 4 still had it), Windows doesn't
come with anything useful for programming. But you're allowed to package
up Python with your app as one installable. I don't know whether that holds
for Perl, too.

> Another possibility is Java, but quite frankly, I hate Java when it comes
> to text-processing. <rant> Java is too ideal and extremely verbose. While
> I admire the purity of its design, I cannot tolerate its verbosity,
> especially when it comes to text-processing. The default string libraries
> leaves a LOT to be desired... especially if we're talking about conlangs
> and unusual orthographies here. I'd sooner code in C or C++ with their
> pointer perils... at least I've programmed in them long enough to have
> earned a little mastery on how to fix obscure bugs. But I find Java just
> too, too verbose, and its militant conventions such as forcing one class
> definition per file drives me up the wall incessantly. </rant>
>
I earn my daily crust as a Java developer - creating an application around
intelligent mobile agents. I've seen people do wonders with Java, and it
supports Unicode, at least, but it's so bloated - everything, the runtime,
the libraries, the API's, everything except the language definition itself.
And it's so static, compared to the dynamicity of OO-programming in Python.
I love being able to create dictionaries of classes and creating objects
from them.



Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.valdyas.org