Re: Phoenix language

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Hi,

Am 23.10.2014 um 00:22 schrieb Gregory Casamento <greg.casamento@gmail.com>:

> Dr. Schaller,
> 
> On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 6:06 PM, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller
> <hns@computer.org> wrote:
>> 
> [ snipped.. ]

[reinserted to have the real context]

>>> There was, in fact, some discussion on these lines.  There were
>>> postings to the list about swift when the language was first
>>> announced.   The decision at that time was to write one if Apple
>>> didn’t open theirs.  

>> 
>> I remember some discussion but wasn’t aware that such a decision was taken.
> 
> That's because I'm doing it because I am interested in doing it.   I'm
> not sure that we needed a discussion or decision by committee on this.

You can of course always decide what you do privately (and I do the same).
IMHO it is a little different when a project is represented.

> Here was the announcement of our position, which I shared with the
> list:
> 
> http://heronsperch.blogspot.com/2014/06/gnusteps-position-on-swift.html

I apparently missed that. Wetware shows exponential decay of information.
Unless it is refreshed regularily… This is what we engineers tend to leave
to “marketing people”.

> 
>> It looks like a “I, GC” project rather than a “we, GNUstep”. So you should 
>> not
>> be astonished about some reactions here.
> 
> Seriously?  And here I was under the impression that when I say
> something is for this project, then it is.  What other reason would I
> have for doing it?   We have soooo much stuff in our repository, does
> it seem appropriate to put a compiler in there as well?  I mean if you
> guys think it's appropriate to put it there on top of everything else,
> I certainly can if that would make you feel more comfortable.  I know
> that it would facilitate people helping me with it as we wouldn't have
> to go through the issues of adding people to the repo at
> source.ind.ie.

That is indeed an argument to make it part of GNUstep. Almost nobody
knows these ind.ie activities - while GNUstep is known (I don’t know the
number of subscribers on this list but it must be many).

> 
> I am, honestly, astonished with how good intentions can be stretched
> and distorted by others to be something else.    What I don't
> understand, quite frankly, is that when I first joined this project

which project are you talking about? GNUstep or Phoenix?

> we
> were all very much in the spirit of doing things that we enjoyed.
> Lately it seems like everyone has to go through committee and I have
> to tell you I'm getting very very tired of that approach.  Mainly
> because it hasn’t worked very well for us.

My POV on this is that it does not need a committee but developers who
tell the group (represented e.g. by the gnustep lists) what they plan to do
and why - (but only if they want help and support from the community).

And listen to comments and suggestions from peers. This is not a decision
committee (which is IMHO only needed if it is about distributing money).

But a lively community. 

Riccardo, Fred and myself did have several such workshops (and sometimes
others joined as well). These were very fruitful moves forward.

Call this team a “development committee” instead of “decision committee”
and it has worked very well for us (and fixed many bugs).

<ignore>
So if you talk about the spirit of the GNUstep community, I feel the same
tiredness. But that is IMHO not because of having comittees or not. It is more
about recognising that only a very small portion of mankind cares about
what we enjoy, while all others immediately follow the moves of Apple.

This has something to do with the cometlike rise of Apple’s market shares.
In the 1990ies GNUstep was technologically ahead of Apple (until they
introduced OS X 10.0).

And since we feel as individualists where everyone only does what he/she
enjoys, there is no emergent big picture except a big pile of activities loosely
related to Objective-C and the OpenSTEP heritage.

This makes it difficult to explain what GNUstep is and what it is good for.
With some directions it would be easier - and people could contribute to
what is urgently needed instead of what they just enjoy today.

But I don’t want to warm up that discussion again, because it never comes
to a good end and only increases frustration. And has nothing to do with
the topic. So please nobody answer on this.
</ignore>


> 
> [snipped]
>>> Swift, as I see it, is important for our future.  Also, I wasn't sure
>>> if it was a good idea to put it into GNUstep's repo.  I may still put
>>> a version of it there if needed.
>> 
>> This makes me even more puzzled. Are there two versions planned?
> 
> I can have the same code in two places.   This is not a new concept.
> 
>> Anyways it is a good initiative.
> 
> Thanks, at least one thing positive here.

Let me add some more questions to better understand the details of the
Phoenix project. So that I am enabled (and maybe others) to positively
contribute on the technical side:

* what is the target of the compiler output? I could imagine Obj-C,
   Assembler, C++, Java or JavaScript but don’t know.
* could you take the AST code from the ObjCKit.framework of mySTEP?
* could you make it compatible to use the same pipeline, i.e. make Phoenix
  a frontend for a common AST framework/library and backends?
* what is the rationale to write it in Obj-C if Swift tries to supersede it?
* what is the problem with lex/bison (I didn’t understand David’s concerns)?

BR,
Nikolaus