[Freedombox-discuss] Which languages should software be developed in?

[James Vasile]

On Mon, 28 Feb 2011 22:03:34 -0500, Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg at fifthhorseman.net> wrote:
> On 02/28/2011 09:57 PM, Anthony Papillion wrote:
> > I'm about to begin work again on a privacy program that I believe will
> > fit within the Freedom Box goals. Originally, I was going to develop it
> > as a desktop application in Python but, as someone pointed out
> > yesterday, Python isn't the right choice for embedded development, so I
> > want to base it on a language that could be used in the project.
> 
> I think python is a fine choice.  the machines people are currently
> talking about targeting have enough RAM to deal with python, and they're
> becoming cheaper and more-powerful (and less-energy-intensive) all the time.
> 
> If you're comfortable in python, make it in python.  If it becomes too
> slow or too resource-hungry to run on a machine with 512MiB of RAM, get
> help profiling it and optimize the hotspots.
> 
> Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
> 
> 	--dkg
> 

I agree.  The plug computers we are currently considering have more RAM
and faster processors than the years-old laptop I replaced only
recently.  It ran plenty of python just fine and still had enough
headroom to fit the variety of other intense applications I use for my
daily work.