Re: [Flightgear-devel] A FGPythonSys implementation: The embedded Python interpreter as a FlightGear subsystem.

[geneb <ge...@de...>]

On Sun, 24 Jan 2016, Thorsten Renk wrote:

> * because it is a technology enabler
> -> presupposed that we're somewhat limited with Nasal - I just don't see 
> what kinds of problems we can not solve with it
>
The problem is that with Nasal, the knowledge pool is very shallow.  If 
you get stuck on a problem, the number of people with expert Nasal 
experience is very small.  With Python or Lua, your available resources 
are many orders of magnitude greater.  With those greater resources, 
you're more likely to attract new users that are interested in that side 
of the platform.

Realistically, you're going to find a lot more people interested in 
building content for FlightGear that doing core development work simply 
because the learning curve is shallower.  Face it, working on FlightGear 
core code isn't for inexperienced developers.

> Is Nasal somehow conceptually flawed, limited, not secure enough, i.e. are 
> we trying to overcome a genuine limitation?
>
It's great for what it does and I don't really think Nasal should be 
dumped, but there's nothing preventing an additional resource like Python 
or Lua from being added.

> Do we in the end want a scripting language that is more widely used just 
> because it is more widely used (which is a disadvantage if you think of 
> malicious code), because we hope to re-use other code, because there's 
> less transition time learning a slightly differently syntax?
>
I really think the whole "malicious code" thing is a red herring. 
Consider the number of games & simulators that use user accessable 
scripting languages - there's a LOT of them out there.  I've yet to hear 
of a single instance where any of these packages fell victim to any sort 
of attack.

> Lets just say if I end up for months having to fix e.g. AW because the 
> translation procedure to language XY wasn't perfect and we did this for 
> the sole reason that some people prefer the syntax of 
> Lua/Python/Anaconda/... over Nasal, I am going to be really unhappy.
>
Again, there's no practical reason to drop Nasal entirely.  Adding an 
additional scripting engine just increases the usability of FlightGear.

g.

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