Re: [Swig-devel] The swig hate webpage

[David B. <dav...@da...>]

On Dec 7, 2005, at 7:58 PM, Marcelo Matus wrote:

> Ah!, finally we have an official (sort of) I-hate-swig web page!
>
> For your enjoy:
>
>   http://bob.pythonmac.org/archives/2005/03/11/swig-hate/
>

Ah yes.... This reminds me of a quote I heard from John Ousterhout at  
a Tcl conference several years back:

    "There are two types of programming languages---those that  
everyone hates and
     those that nobody uses."  - J. Ousterhout.

So, in that vein, I'm not so concerned about it;-).

The hate page does have some valid points though. I think we do tend  
to change things a lot---maybe even more than we should.  I often  
wonder whether the 1.3.x branch will ever stabilize. I also sometimes  
wonder whether my absence from the scene is a factor (as most people  
know I've been missing in action for awhile). On the other hand, I  
never intended SWIG to be used in a way where you would be writing  
tons and tons of typemaps and all sorts of low-level API code.   So,  
if people are using it in that way and stuff is breaking, they've  
really missed the whole point.

I have to say though, I've gotten pretty used to complaints about  
SWIG.  It's easy for someone to come along and say that it "sucks"  
along with some comment like "one of these days someone is going to  
come along and do C/C++ parsing right."   I just have one response to  
that---do it then.  If this is so easy and you know how to do it  
"right", then stop whining, put your money where your mouth is, and  
make something that's better.   I'll be more than happy to tell  
people about it and might even become your biggest supporter.

For what it's worth, I've always had a fairly neutral attitude about  
SWIG. If someone were to come up with an alternative that completely  
blew it out of the water, that would be fantastic.  As it is, the  
SWIG web page has always tried to point people to alternative tools  
and approaches. I've certainly never made any claims that SWIG is the  
best, the easiest, or only way to solve the wrapping problem.   
Frankly, I'm flattered that people are using it at all.

Cheers,
Dave