Comments on: Choosing an Extension Language http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/choosing-an-extension-language Sublime Text News Tue, 29 Jan 2013 23:01:45 +1100 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Who would have thought Sublime Text was so, well, sublime! « Rants, Rambles, and Rhinos http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/choosing-an-extension-language/comment-page-1#comment-861 Who would have thought Sublime Text was so, well, sublime! « Rants, Rambles, and Rhinos Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:07:15 +0000 http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/choosing-an-extension-language#comment-861 [...] One thing that I was disappointed with was that there was no version control integration with Mercurial, my version control system of choice. That is, until I started reading about the powerful plugin architecture and wrote a tool for it myself! The author of Sublime Text probably realized he can’t fill every single need out of the box, so he provided the tools for end users to improve it themselves through a complete Python environment and plugin API. Using Python as an extension language was a great choice because now users can use the huge amount of Python code publicly available, some users may already know it, and the developer can focus on developing the editor, rather than creating an extension language. The author of the software discusses the reasons he chose Python here. [...] [...] One thing that I was disappointed with was that there was no version control integration with Mercurial, my version control system of choice. That is, until I started reading about the powerful plugin architecture and wrote a tool for it myself! The author of Sublime Text probably realized he can’t fill every single need out of the box, so he provided the tools for end users to improve it themselves through a complete Python environment and plugin API. Using Python as an extension language was a great choice because now users can use the huge amount of Python code publicly available, some users may already know it, and the developer can focus on developing the editor, rather than creating an extension language. The author of the software discusses the reasons he chose Python here. [...]

]]> By: kib2 http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/choosing-an-extension-language/comment-page-1#comment-446 kib2 Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:21:48 +0000 http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/choosing-an-extension-language#comment-446 Nice to hear you about Scheme (or even Lisp), but I don't understand why users would hate it. Afraid of the parenthesis ? I don't think so, that's in fact what has made Lisp so powerful with such a nice macros system where the language can builds itself. But I'm also a big fan of Python, so I won't complain anymore :) Nice to hear you about Scheme (or even Lisp), but I don’t understand why users would hate it.

Afraid of the parenthesis ? I don’t think so, that’s in fact what has made Lisp so powerful with such a nice macros system where the language can builds itself.

But I’m also a big fan of Python, so I won’t complain anymore :)

]]> By: Marijn http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/choosing-an-extension-language/comment-page-1#comment-445 Marijn Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:58:39 +0000 http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/choosing-an-extension-language#comment-445 Related to this, http://www.advogato.org/article/550.html makes an interesting point. When an app gets popular, users will prefer to script it in their own favourite language, and it is not that hard to plan ahead for this. Related to this, http://www.advogato.org/article/550.html makes an interesting point. When an app gets popular, users will prefer to script it in their own favourite language, and it is not that hard to plan ahead for this.

]]> By: zealot http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/choosing-an-extension-language/comment-page-1#comment-443 zealot Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:21:02 +0000 http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/choosing-an-extension-language#comment-443 > Using Scheme or another Lisp dialect as an extension > language is an effective way to make sure you won’t > have any extensions. Not sure if this is true. Think of emacs. It has lots of extensions, all of them in emacs' own lisp dialect. > Using Scheme or another Lisp dialect as an extension
> language is an effective way to make sure you won’t
> have any extensions.
Not sure if this is true. Think of emacs. It has lots of extensions, all of them in emacs’ own lisp dialect.

]]> By: schlenk http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/choosing-an-extension-language/comment-page-1#comment-442 schlenk Sat, 12 Apr 2008 16:04:29 +0000 http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/choosing-an-extension-language#comment-442 You missed Tcl in your list. It does most of the stuff Python does, offers some more security features, nicer unicode support and has better embedding in threaded environments. You missed Tcl in your list. It does most of the stuff Python does, offers some more security features, nicer unicode support and has better embedding in threaded environments.

]]> By: she http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/choosing-an-extension-language/comment-page-1#comment-441 she Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:44:08 +0000 http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/choosing-an-extension-language#comment-441 "Python has ctypes, and Ruby doesn’t. ctypes provides an ad-hoc way to call functions in any shared library in the system." Maybe I am missing on something or I am simply mistaken, but doesnt Ruby have DL which allows the same that ctypes can do? require 'dl/import' require 'dl/struct' dlload "libc.so" LIBXAU.strlen("abc") # => 3 libc = DL.dlopen('libfuse.so') etc. for example. Would be nice if someone could explain what python ctypes does more than that. Anyway, I agree that python is slightly ahead of ruby in certain areas such as more users or better overall docu. I also agree about this: "Which language is better really isn’t relevant" and I think there should be no barrier between ruby and python users. It would be great to use certain libraries (wrappers) around software in either language. For example, python bindings towards ogre3d are more likely to be up to date than ruby bindings of ogre3d. But I would not want to learn and use python just in order to use it with Ogre3d, and I guess for python writers the reverse is true too. Would be nice to use libraries freely, without caring in which language they are implemented. “Python has ctypes, and Ruby doesn’t. ctypes provides an ad-hoc way to call functions in any shared library in the system.”

Maybe I am missing on something or I am simply mistaken, but doesnt Ruby have DL which allows the same that ctypes can do?

require ‘dl/import’
require ‘dl/struct’
dlload “libc.so”
LIBXAU.strlen(”abc”) # => 3
libc = DL.dlopen(’libfuse.so’)

etc. for example. Would be nice if someone could explain what python ctypes does more than that.

Anyway, I agree that python is slightly ahead of ruby in certain areas such as more users or better overall docu.
I also agree about this: “Which language is better really isn’t relevant” and I think there should be no barrier between ruby and python users. It would be great to use certain libraries (wrappers) around software in either language. For example, python bindings towards ogre3d are more likely to be up to date than ruby bindings of ogre3d.

But I would not want to learn and use python just in order to use it with Ogre3d, and I guess for python writers the reverse is true too. Would be nice to use libraries freely, without caring in which language they are implemented.

]]> By: Tomasz Wegrzanowski http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/choosing-an-extension-language/comment-page-1#comment-440 Tomasz Wegrzanowski Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:18:53 +0000 http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/choosing-an-extension-language#comment-440 Ruby has ctypes all right - <a href="http://rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-dl2/" rel="nofollow">Ruby/DL2</a>. Ruby has ctypes all right – Ruby/DL2.

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