[texworks] The future of TeXworks + how you can help

[K. Frank]

Hello TexWorks and Friends!

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 10:52 AM, Jérome Laurens
<jerome.laurens at u-bourgogne.fr> wrote:
>
> Le 12 mars 2012 à 10:09, Stefan Löffler a écrit :
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> [...]
>> Another point that was raised was the low number of (C++) programmers
>> currently involved in the project.
>> ...
>> So if you
>> have some knowledge of/experience with C++ and want to get involved...
>> ...
>> Cheers,
>> Stefan
>
> If you want to attract programmers, you may also want to offer a more attractive programming language.
> C++ is really hard.

I would beg to disagree.

If you do hard things (some programming is inherently hard) with
C++, C++ can be hard.  If you're doing easy things, and make a
point of not wandering into the more obscure corners of the language
(Gee, I think I'll unroll that loop with template meta-programming!
Sounds like fun!), C++ really isn't very hard.

For core infrastructure where the design and logic legitimately
become complicated, and/or where efficiency matters, C++ offers
many benefits.  (Consider trying to rewrite something like Qt in
ruby or python.)

> There are ruby/Qt and python/qt interfaces which are really appealing.

Offering support for a scripting language for relatively simple
extensible functionality that naturally fits a scripting programming
style is a great idea. However, I've never liked the "dependency
bloat" that comes along with using multiple (semi-)general-purpose
programming languages to build the core infrastructure.

> JL


Happy Hacking!


K Frank