From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Aug 18 16:55:08 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9E6C31065672 for ; Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:55:08 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from akm@theinternet.com.au) Received: from fallbackmx10.syd.optusnet.com.au (fallbackmx10.syd.optusnet.com.au [211.29.132.251]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7DB278FC26 for ; Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:55:07 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail01.syd.optusnet.com.au (mail01.syd.optusnet.com.au [211.29.132.182]) by fallbackmx10.syd.optusnet.com.au (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id o7IF3lQ8020325 for ; Thu, 19 Aug 2010 01:03:47 +1000 Received: from camelot.theinternet.com.au (d110-32-232-206.bla800.nsw.optusnet.com.au [110.32.232.206]) by mail01.syd.optusnet.com.au (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id o7IF3gtT018025; Thu, 19 Aug 2010 01:03:43 +1000 Received: by camelot.theinternet.com.au (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 589BF17044; Thu, 19 Aug 2010 01:03:42 +1000 (EST) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 01:03:42 +1000 From: Andrew Milton To: Luigi Rizzo Message-ID: <20100818150342.GA402@camelot.theinternet.com.au> Mail-Followup-To: Andrew Milton , Luigi Rizzo , freebsd-current@freebsd.org References: <4C6505A4.9060203@FreeBSD.org> <4C650B75.3020800@FreeBSD.org> <4C651192.9020403@FreeBSD.org> <4C673898.2080609@FreeBSD.org> <20100818134341.GA88861@johnny.reilly.home> <20100818142852.GA80221@onelab2.iet.unipi.it> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20100818142852.GA80221@onelab2.iet.unipi.it> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Interpreted language(s) in the base X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:55:08 -0000 +-------[ Luigi Rizzo ]---------------------- | On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 11:43:41PM +1000, Andrew Reilly wrote: | > On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 11:15:55PM -0700, Doug Barton wrote: | > > got any other suggestions? | > | > This is very much a "sorry I asked" question, but is none-the | > less quite a good one, given the size of the hole to be plugged. | > | > I think that a reasonable answer for this sort of thing might be | > one of the dynamic languages that compiles to C, like (perhaps) | > one of the schemes (chicken, gambit-C, bigloo, etc). You get | > the benefit of flexibility and dynamism with good regexp and | > data structure ability, good performance, and only requiring the | > build tools available in the base system, as long as you don't | > want to be the developer: just ship the C code (as well as the | > source, of course). | | slightly off topic but I disagree on the latter part. | | The whole point of having source code is to be able to make | modifications, small or large, private or ones to be contributed | back. As a teacher, i am very concerned about the ease-of-use for | non-developer types: it is important to make it easy for people to | experiments, as this is one of the ways people learn things. I have to agree with Luigi. You have to work out your target audience, and that should be your first constraint to choosing the language. If the language has a syntax structure that's going to be hard to parse by non-developers at first glance (like forth or perl), then you're really limiting the userbase. C is scriptable and embeddable these days from a variety of projects, but, I wouldn't recommend that either necessarily (since C doesn't have dynamic typing), even if we could get 100% architecture coverage. -- Andrew Milton akm@theinternet.com.au