The idea was having at least a couple of fully working languages, in
addition to C++, ready for the first Haiku release, that's why
concentrating our efforts on some target is important.
It may well be, as has been pointed out in other posts, that
discussing here the merits of the languages is not the best approach,
because of the time wasting and the heated debates that it generates.
Point taken. But a decision has to be made in some way, at some point.
Just having individual uncoordinated developers go their own way is
not a good strategy, as major no accomplishment can be achieved
without organized efforts. The development of programming languages
on an operating system is no exception.
Of course, it's perfectly fine for someone to work on whatever
language they want, and I don't mean to discourage that.
The core of of my reasoning is that if we want to present Haiku in the
best way to the computing world at large, we must remember that there
are certain features that are expected from an operating system, and
which determine its success or failure. A good range of programming
tools is one of those requirements.
All the other major parts of the OS are being currently worked on
(kudos to developers) and everything is going great. The only area
that seems to have been a bit overlooked is the availability of
programming languages for wannabe Haiku developers. Lack of manpower
or simply lack of planning?
