ulc-devs team mailing list archive

[Frederik Elwert <frederik.elwert@xxxxxx>]

Hello everybody,

I am very glad that so many people are interested in getting this
started. And I think that it is also a good opportunity for those new to
FLOSS development to do some first steps in this area, and for all of us
to learn.

We are currently experiencing one of the rather annoying steps when
starting a new project: Choosing the right language. If I counted
correctly, Pablo and Thibaut prefer Vala, Patrick and I would go for
Python, and Ole did not state a strong opinion, but also has some python
experience.

The good thing is that in the GNOME and Unity world, this decision is
probably not that important, as thanks to GObject Introspection, we have
the same bindings for the underlying libraries. So both versions would
probably look quite similar regarding the program logic.

I do understand the advantages of vala. On the other hand, python seems
to have the advantage of being easier for programming beginners.
Additionally, since python does not have to be compiled, it is easier to
try things out during development, as you do not have to run the
compile-install cycle every time.

So my suggestion would be: Let us try out a rapid prototyping approach:
Begin with a python implementation, try out some things, and once things
have settled, we can still decide on re-implementing it in vala for
speed reasons, as that should be quite straightforward. Vala skills
would also come in handy when doing the GNOME Contacts integration, even
if the lens itself is in python.

What do you think? Is this a viable approach? Other suggestions?

Regards
Frederik