[OSM-dev] Re: osmeditor2 to Java, and a common Java OSM client library

[Nick Hill]

Ben Gimpert wrote:
>>This discussion has got me thinking about converting osmeditor2 to
>>Java. I originally chose C++ as I had the following concerns about
>>Java:

Hello Ben.

You are suggesting the client side be written in Ruby. I have no basic 
problem with a client app written in Ruby.

I don't see the relative slowness of Ruby improving; Ruby's design does 
not tend to make shortcuts for computational efficiency. I generalise 
the lack of such shortcuts and the general ruby design philosophy as 
being the reason why ruby is perhaps both the cleanest and slowest 
language. However, the computational cost on the client side would be 
externalised to a large extent from the OSM project so for me isn't such 
a great issue.

Would your suggestion to use Ruby require a complete re-write of the 
client side?

Could we deploy a Ruby implementation conveniently as an applet in web 
browsers with reasonable performance like we can for Java?

Could we make statically linked binary distributions of such a ruby 
client side for various platforms (point and click to run), along with 
adequate performance to work on moderate (say 500Mhz/256M) platforms 
like we will be able to for free java?

Do you have any (rough) estimates on the relative amount of programming 
work necessary to achieve these goals from the current point with Ruby 
versus Java?

These are all genuine questions.