Re: How does GNUSTEP measure up?

[Riccardo]

Hello,


On Friday, September 17, 2004, at 01:03 AM, Arich Chanachai wrote:

> 1. How does it compare in regards to speed? vs. Java or .DotNET
I don't know and I don't to .DotNET.
I can speak for obj-c vs java.
the "c" parts of obj-c are truly native and are really fast. The "oo" 
part is usually eitheer as fast as java or comparable. There are some 
cases though were obj-c is slower (repeated method invocation of a 
method) because it doesn't cache methods automatically but you can do 
IMP cache manually (but still, at my tests it was a bit slower than 
sun's Java).
In any case comparing even Java speed itself is tricky, among different 
platforms or VM's.. so these are just indicative ideas.

> 2. How easy is it to create custom language bindings?
I don't know, but there were works on Java and Ruby interfaces (JIGS, 
RIGS)

> 4. What is the depth of its own libraries?
Very good. And quite tested over years of development. Think about 
OpenStep and Macos-X and be pleased.

> 5. I heard it has a dev. IDE, is it better or as good as Eclipse or VS?
The IDE is very good, also thanks to the design of the libraries 
regarding GUI support. The GUI designer is very advanced and works well 
(Gorm). The IDE with the code editor (Project CEnter) lacks a bit behind 
currently  but it is being developed on, so expect news.


> 6. How easy would it be for me to port Delphi/Java/DotNET/Smalltalk 
> libraries to it?
I have no experience myself, but gathering from talk here, I hear that 
at least Java and Smalltalk should be feasible.

> 7. How good is its interface to DLLs and C/C++ code?
DLLs? windows? duno.
Interface to C is excellent since Obj-C is a true superset of C! 
Interface to C++ may need some wrappers, that seem to be more a tedious 
work than real trouble. Or you can use that bastard son-of-a-bitch that 
is Objective-C++ of which the goal is indeed ease the binding to C++. 
(You shouldn't do real programming with it). Think about what apple has 
done With safari and KHTML and you see it works.

-Ric