Offlineimap is dead, long live offlineimap?

[Tim Gray]

On May 17, 2010 at 12:02 PM +0200, Christoph Höger wrote:
> 2. Should we move on to another (compiled) language to make maintenance
> easier?

While I'm not planning on contributing since I only have minor programming 
skills, I see two problems with a rewrite in another language.  First, it's 
a rewrite.  That's all good and fine if the rewrite actually gets finished, 
but if it doesn't, you don't end up with anything.  Offlineimap is a 
reasonably mature project that works and has a lot of bugs already removed. 
I'd think twice about throwing that away.

Secondly, moving to a different language.  Python has good documentation and 
is widely used.  If you are going to rewrite, do it in C.  At least then you 
potentially pick up some speed and you can tap into a good base of C 
programmers.  A move to any other scripting language is just a move sideways 
in my mind, at best.  Python, Ruby, and Perl seem to me to be the front 
runners in scripting languages and come preinstalled with a lot of systems 
and have a good selection of libraries.  While any of the three are good 
candidates, it's already in Python, so why change?  Other languages are more 
obscure and I don't see what they really offer.