Re: Interpreted language(s) in the base

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.

Having sources in some fantastic new language 'fuffa' and no 'fuffa2c'
tool is almost as bad as having no source (in fact, it is like the
joke of supplying source for the GPL'd software in your brand new
LCD tv or appliance. I'd like to know who will ever be able to build
an updated image and upload it to the appliance)

cheers
luigi