[jdev] Re: The State of Our Code-bases

[Rachel Blackman]

> Not to drench the end of this with gasoline. Yes, C is prone to memory 
> leaks
> and bugs from misuse. That's why they made C++. :-)

Since when did C++ fix the tendency towards memory leaks?  Even 
Objective C, which uses a Smalltalkish object model and has garbage 
collection, is not particularly immune to memory leaks. ;)

As you say, no programming language will solve all your problems for 
you.  Interpreted languages like Python may make it easier to write 
code which does not leak, but they may not necessarily scale well for a 
server of multiple thousands of users.  (I admit I've never done 
scalability tests on Python code, so maybe it can in this case.)  
Similarly, native, compiled code may be able to do more in terms of 
integrating with a desktop OS environment (providing spellcheck 
services on OS X from system dictionary, providing system tray services 
on Windows, etc.) but you lose the easy cleanup and less-headachy 
memory management of an interpreted language.

Like you said, there's no silver bullet.

Rather than see us all going over what should be done to produce one 
'reference implementation,' (or what language would be best to write it 
in,) I would rather see a process and set of tools for testing how well 
a given thing adheres to spec.  A 'client' which will connect to a 
server, try all kinds of things automatically and record the results, 
flagging abnormalities, making it easy to 'certify' a server as fully 
compliant.  A 'server' a client can connect to and do things, to make 
it easier to test the compliance for the client and get certification.

Yeah, I know, I tried this once before, to push for various Jabber 
certification programs, for servers and clients and components, but I 
think really it would benefit us here.  As has been pointed out, 
real-world implementations often differ slightly from JEPs, and so 
sometimes various bits of software don't always agree on how to do the 
same thing on XMPP or Jabber.

I really do still think being able to standardize, both on what 
features are supported for various levels of certification, and for how 
rigidly those implementations adhere to specification, would be of 
immense value.

I'm sure everyone who is on standards-jig has gotten tired of me 
tossing two pennies in, but there's my $0.02 on this. ;)

-- 
Rachel 'Sparks' Blackman -- sysadmin, developer, mad scientist
"If it is not broken, give me five minutes to redesign it!"
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