So GNOME finally chose an official language and it is JavaScript. As one of the developers who helped bring Python into the world of GObject Introspection, you would think I would be upset that they chose JavaScript over the language I and others worked so hard to get up and running in GNOME 3. You would be wrong. My only questions is what took the GNOME community so long?
JavaScript is the best choice going forward for a lightweight glue language between the great C libraries that the GNOME project has produced. Python, while great and my language of choice, carries a lot of baggage that makes it hard to be a complete fit going forward. For instance many of the compromises we have to make when using GI in Python means we no longer take advantage of some of the nicer features of the language. In other-words GNOME programming in Python often veers from “the Python Way”.
Now that finally there is some consensus, we can all move forward and GNOME can concentrate on making a kick ass development platform that can focus on the little things like great docs, best practices and tight language integration. They can do all this without the distraction of “but that isn’t how it is done in <insert your favorite language here>”. Seriously, if someone brings that up in a discussion they can now be thoroughly ignored.
Does that mean other languages are left out in the cold? Certainly not. Python still remains one of the best languages supporting GI and GNOME. That will continue as long as people are interested in contributing to the effort. It will even gain from the documentation work being done by the JavaScript guys.
Day in and day out I work with many computer languages. While I may hold my favorites close to me, I have also come to recognize there are times when even languages I may not be fond of are a better fit for a particular problem space. Like it or not, JavaScript is pervasive and really is the way forward for rapid development in GNOME. It must have been a tense moment when the decision was made but I applaud that a hard decision was made and we can now move forward with a clear vision of delivering a great developer story for the GNOME desktop.
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