Python vs C++

[Rustom Mody]

On Saturday, August 23, 2014 3:19:37 AM UTC+5:30, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 7:38 AM, Michael Torrie  wrote:
> > On 08/22/2014 02:06 PM, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
> >> I tend to think the opposite: C++ barely has a niche left. I definitely
> >> wouldn't want to use C++ very far from its (very narrow) sweet spot.
> > I agree that it's niche is narrowing.  But it's still pretty wide and
> > widely used.  Many adobe products are C++, for example.  OpenOffice and
> > LibreOffice is C++.  You could argue that's because they are old
> > projects and were started in C++. But honestly if you were
> > reimplementing OpenOffice today what would you choose?  Python would be
> > appropriate for certain aspects of OO, such as parts of the UI, macros,
> > filters, etc. ...

> Frankly, I wouldn't write OO in anything, because I think the entire
> concept of a WYSIWYG editor is flawed. Much better to use markup and
> compile it. But if I were to write something like that, probably what
> I'd do would be to write a GUI widget in whatever lowish-level
> language is appropriate (probably C, with most GUI toolkits), and then
> use a high level language (probably Python or Pike) to build the
> application. I'm not familiar with all of OO/LO's components, but I
> believe that model will probably work for all of them (the document
> editor, obviously; the presentation editor might be done a bit
> differently, but it'd still work this way; the spreadsheet quite
> possibly doesn't even need a custom widget; etc).

Here is an example (not identical but analogous to) where markup+compile is 
distinctly weaker than wysiwyg:

You can use lilypond to type music and the use a midi player to play it
But lilypond does not allow playing and seeing-in-realtime

WYSIWYG editors allow that -- can make a huge difference to beginners
who find music hard to read.

Here's an example I typed out in the wysiwig editor nted
https://vimeo.com/16894001 ¹

Many more examples like this on the musescore site eg
http://musescore.com/user/19710/scores/261621

I believe that in a like way an app like Word that has a full (Turing complete)
language -- VBA -- is more powerful than an offline tool like lilypond

¹ No I dont enjoy clickety-click when a typewriter would work better.
I know a musician friend who has worked out the best combo: type in
with a cheap midi connected keyboard, then use Sibelius.
I believe its only a question of time before musescore like wysiwyg editors
will be able to do that