Re: [Social-discuss] Languages -- let's make a web application

[Melvin Carvalho]

2010/3/28 Henry Litwhiler <address@hidden>

On 3/28/10 1:56 PM, Matt Lee wrote:

On 03/28/2010 01:50 PM, Henry Litwhiler wrote:

 

PHP simply isn't the language we want to use for the *backbone* of GNU
Social. It's all well and good for parsing data and displaying it to the
browser, but it simply isn't suited for the nitty-gritty work of
handling node-to-node communications - at least, not in the distributed,
p2p model that Ted Smith and I envision.
   

Well, it has to be. We have to find a way to make it work.

We cannot, and will not, expect novice users to install Python
applications on commodity web hosting.

There's no reason at all why I can't set up a server, publish my social
activity to my own server and have my friends pull that information in.


 

I don't see why users have to be able to use commodity hosting. If we make it easy enough, anyone can host their own GNU Social install, p2p style.

I see both points of view here.  In fact I've spent the last year playing with both PHP and Python to do exactly some of the things discussed in GNU Social.

I agree that you will have a problem running things on your localhost desktop using solely PHP, and some element of Python glue can get you through the final stage (perhaps Ubuntu One could be a good fit here).

But equally I think Matt is right to focus on one use case to begin with (PHP commodity hosting) and let the project grow.  It will, after all, be AGPL so anyone that wants to modify the code and make a python client is quite welcome to, and contribute the changes back.  I think it's an architectural decision that can be deferred, so in that case, I agree let's focus on building a distributed social net using PHP and see what issues that brings up, then review the project components iteratively as it gets built out.