[Asterisk-Dev] Wish List / Brain Storm from AstriCon

[Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists]

On Wed, 29 Sep 2004 15:55:56 +0200, Holger Schurig
<hs4233 at mail.mn-solutions.de> wrote:
> Based on this thinking we would still write code in old BASIC:
> 
> 10 FOR I = 1 TO 10
> 20 PRINT "HELLO"
> 30 NEXT I
> 
> But somehow we have now languages without line numbers and we love them
> all.

I agree, but the trouble is that people are very religious about their
choice of language and I guess Mark is concerned about not letting the
all too often occuring religious fights over languages be carried into
Asterisk. We are all old enough to realise already that no matter what
language you were to implement for dialplan scripting, there will
always be some folks who want it different. You can't really be
everything to everybody. I think Mark is doing the right thing trying
to avoid this.

Having said that, I'd like to emphasise that I am not saying we
shouldn't aim to get something better. However, I don't think the
solution is to modify the existing scripting engine.

Let that whachamacallit? BASTIC ?! stay as it is, perhaps a few minor
improvements here and there, but basically leave it alone.

Instead, we should be using the energy we are otherwise likely to
waste on fighting over enhancing BASTIC with syntactic sugar and put
it to work towards a low level layer into which multiple concurrent
scripting engines can be plugged in. This could be in the form of a
common byte code or it could be a Scripting Language API, something
along those lines.

In any event, it should be an architecture that allows multiple
scripting languages to be used for dialplan scripting without those
languages having to be translated into each other or otherwise being
aware of each other.

Then every camp can build their own engine and use whatever language
they fancy. The Perl afficionados will make a Perlsterisk language,
you and me, we'd be looking forward to Asterython and others migh use
Pastal, JastaScript, Lispast or Schastme, Tastl/Tk or Bastsh or
whatever. The ones who use BASTIC will be ridiculed and the ones
trying to implement C* and .AST will be banned from the list.
Everybody will be happy ;-)

The only controversial side effect would be that posting dialplan
excerpts on the mailing list for asking questions when getting stuck
will become a bit more -- shall we say -- exciting ?!

rgds
benjk

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