What Makes A Programming Language Good

[Russel Winder]

On Thu, 2011-01-20 at 12:32 +0100, Gour wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Jan 2011 10:13:00 +0000
> Russel Winder <russel at russel.org.uk> wrote:
> 
> > SCons, Waf, and Gradle are currently the tools of choice.
> 
> Gradle is (mostly) for Java-based projects, afaict?

It is the case that there are two more or less distinct domains of build
-- JVM-oriented, and everything else.  There is though nothing stopping
a single build system from trying to be more universal.  Sadly every
attempt to date has failed for one reason or another (not necessarily
technical).

Basically there seems to be a positive feedback loop in action keeping
the two domains separate:  basically the tools from one domain don't
work well on the opposite domain and so no-one uses them there, so no
evolution happens to improve things.

In this particular case, Gradle has great support for everything
JVM-related and no real support for C, C++, Fortran, etc.  All attempts
to raise the profile of the Ant C/C++ compilation tasks, which Gradle
could use trivially, have come to nothing.  

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at russel.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
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