[Freedombox-discuss] report on activities in Banja Luka

[J David Eisenberg]

On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 1:59 AM, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
> On 11-08-10 at 06:33am, J David Eisenberg wrote:
>> On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 3:37 PM, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
>> > On 11-08-09 at 08:45pm, John Walsh wrote:
>> [snip]
>>
>> > I recommended Buddycloud as an initial sample application for
>> > FreedomBox development, because it...
>> >
>> >  * is not written in java
>> >  * is not written in PHP
>> >  * uses XMPP (not reinventing messaging on top of http)
>> >  * is actively being packaged for Debian (by me).
>> >
>> > Those are just my reasons, not show-stoppers for others: Please do
>> > work on alternatives - would be awesome with friendly competition!
>> >
>>
>> Sorry, but I just had to put in my two cents' worth here: I agree with
>> the last two reasons, but not the first two. Though there are some
>> programming languages I prefer to others, I believe that you can write
>> (bad) FORTRAN  in any programming language.
>> (http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039535)
>>
>> That said, I was once asked, "which one is better, C or Pascal?" I
>> replied, "Which one is better: a screwdriver or a hammer?" Tell me
>> what you want to build, and there's your answer. That's why the
>> language-agnostic buddycloud approach is appealing.
>>
>> Purely out of curiosity, would you prefer Scala to Java? Same JVM, but
>> a more "modern" language.
>
> The question asked was not "which language is most shiny for FreedomBox
> to exclusively use" but rather "why were some tool favored over other
> more mature ones".
>
> Personally(!) I would not choose between any of Scala or Java.  But as I
> also wrote (which you snipped from your reply) I would be quite happy
> that others contribute with work on alternatives.
>
> So if between the lines you are asking if you can persuade me(!) to
> spend my time and devotion on Scala (or whatever) then the answer is
> most likely no.  If instead you are asking what languages I would
> tolerate you yourself contributing with, then feel free to use whatever
> you yourself find sensible to use for this particular project.

No, you're reading something into my comments that I did not intend.
I'm not asking you to choose my favorite language (and my "favorite,"
of course, depends on the task at hand). I was really just curious to
know if your dislike was for Java as a language or the JVM as a
platform.
>
> Oh, and if you only care about official statements then ignore me. :-)
>
>
> Looking forward to your concrete contributions too!

I'm more of a documentation kind of guy, so that's probably where
you'll see me doing stuff.

>
>  - Jonas
>
> --
>  * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
>  * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
>
>  [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
>
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