[Sunuml-developers] Language?

[Matthew S. <m....@my...>]

Hi all,

Back on the StarUML forums there was some discussion of which language 
to use for SunUML.  Now that the SunUML project is starting to take 
shape, I thought I'd kick the discussion off here. (Apologies if I'm 
repeating myself from those forums)

The two languages that popped up were C++ and Python. 

While I like C++ as a language, I don't feel that a pure C++ 
implementation would benefit the project.  It has a high learning curve 
and I think it would slow the project down.

Python is an easy language to learn and program in.  People with 
experience with other languages should pick it up easily.  This will 
allow us to move rapidly.  It can appear alien to some as it is white 
space dependent, but that dependency is one of the strengths - it helps 
in forcing a clean code style.   Python is easy to use with C/C++ and 
parts of the code (eventually all?) could easily be moved to C++.  The 
python disttools allow for inclusion of uncompiled and compiled C/C++ 
modules.

However, in any language, it is easy to write code, but it is harder to 
write good code.  Python may open the project to unexperienced 
developers and code quality may suffer.  But that's a quality of open 
source, the experienced developers will hopefully pick up on poor code 
and gently guide submitter along the correct tracks.

Thoughts?