On 16/07/2006, at 6:49 PM, Dan Stenning wrote:
Its not a case of reinventing the wheel. There are many good
arguments for a
100% RB. The productivity gains for not having to work in two
different
development environments woujd be huge.
I think you are confusing the Compiler with the Frameworks.
I totally support writing the RB Frameworks using RB code as much as
possible and evolving that towards 100%, unless there are chunks
where you would have long lists of nothing but Declares (there has to
be some point at which C APIs are called).
However, I think there are two very important reasons for not
changing the compiler.
1) It is a huge amount of work - the compiler can be presumed to be
unlike RB idioms. If it makes strong use of C or C++ idioms (yes,
they are considerably different) then there are a number of areas in
which there will be a poor fit with RB the language. I think you
severely underestimate the scope of this work - I would rate it as
more than 1 man-years as a lower limit (in ignorance of the RB code
but a lot of experience in porting code).
2) How many compiler engineers are there on the planet? How many of
them are likely to be able to work on a compiler written in C or C++
vs one written in RB or want to have that on their resume compared to
further work in C or C++? Consider the business risk to RS in making
this change - take Mars offline for a year or two and LOWER their
ability to hire additional/replacement talent, for a gain which
matters to very few users.
It would also mean RS would have to improve the team development
and version
control aspects of RB - all of which would make RS a more "grown
up" and
powerful tool.
Those areas will be more than adequately improved by the Frameworks
being written in RB. Once the bulk of the core frameworks are in RB
we can also pressure RS to release the source to as much as possible,
making life vastly easier for the rest of us. This does NOT mean
making the frameworks open source but means the many experienced
programmers using the source can identify problems, providing fixes
back to the engineers, as well as being able to understand better
what is going on. MOST frameworks are released with source code (see
my latest Cocoa rant at http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?
forum=106&thread=167444).
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