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Who, developers aside, gives a single whit what language it's written in? Just give us something useful, expandable, and with ongoing support for when bugs do a

Who, developers aside, gives a single whit what language it's written in? Just give us something useful, expandable, and with ongoing support for when bugs do appear. So much digital ink (and the associated mindshare) wasted in the design doc whinging on about how much Rust is better than C++ that they hardly talk about the DAW itself. And for features, immediately canning MP3, 4/4 time signatures, and sidechain routing makes this little more than a toy when compared to existing offerings. I'll watch this to see what this becomes, but I don't have high hopes, not with the current stated direction.

drogus 5y ago
This site is for developers, isn't it? For me this is interesting, cause I could see myself contributing to a Rust project, I'm guessing there's more people who think that way.
- falcolas 5y ago
  This website is for developers; the product feature page should be about the product, not the programmers.
  - berkes 5y ago
    Do you consider the README on Github a "product feature page"?
    - falcolas 5y ago
      No, but I do consider a "Design Document" to be a product feature page. It's full of product features (and non-features) after all (when it's not going on about Rust). https://github.com/MeadowlarkDAW/Meadowlark/blob/main/DESIGN_DOC.md https://github.com/MeadowlarkDAW/Meadowlark/blob/main/DESIGN...
- lijogdfljk 5y ago
  Agreed. Furthermore, Rust is/was imo a controversial language - early on some argued it was "too difficult" to write "real" applications in it. I'm super interested in real world performance intensive applications written in Rust, Haskell, etc. Language matters to me, even if i don't plan on participating.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    Rust is about as controversial as Python these days, though for different reasons. To be clear, I'm not annoyed at it being called out here (much - it gets old no matter which langauge is pimped). I'm most annoyed at how much space in the features doc, which should be about the project, not the internals.
    - drogus 5y ago
      This is an early version of the project, so this is most likely not directed at end users. Why would you even address end users at this point? Nobody will use it for a long time anyway, so in my opinion is a great move to address potential contributors in the design doc.
acomjean 5y ago
I think a lot of us who've used the open source linux tools for complex tasks have been bitten by weird UI problems and unstable code (Video editing comes to mind for me). Its much better now, but having a really solid foundation and fewer crashes is a huge win. With the new components they want to build in Rust is kind of exiting. DAWs are a pretty large complex software and a good test for Rust as a language. It will take not insignificant time to optimize and get the feature complete but optimistic this takes off and improves open source software. It seemed to me they were justifying using a new language, because its a little crazy. A lot of existing components and things could be brought together that are open source and already in C++ (or C...). Honestly as a end user, if it works and works well, you won't care (much like you use websites without worrying about the software stack that powers it). But if you want to contribute to building the software you might care.
johncoltrane 5y ago
I am a developer and I couldn't care less about what language $TOY is written in, or if it is open source or not. In this case, though, what is really advertised is the project itself, not the product, which doesn't exist and likely to not exist for a while. In this context, the language choise is probably as relevant as the design goals.
ironmagma 5y ago
There’s a comment like this on every post ending in “written in Rust.” The people who care about this include people who follow the development of the Rust ecosystem because it’s a sign of how capable the ecosystem is becoming.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Here's a list of the libraries we use in the Ardour project. Let me know how the, what is it, "crate" situation is for these or equivalent libraries: atk, atkmm, aubio, autoconf, automake, bison, boost, cairo , cairo , cairomm, cmake, cppunit, curl, expat, fftw, flac, flex, fontconfig, freetype, gdk-pixbuf, gettext, glib, glibmm, gnome-common, gnome-doc-utils, gobject-introspection, gtk-doc, gtk-engines, gtk+ X, gtk+ Quartz, gtk+, gtkmm, gtk-osx-docbook , harfbuzz, intltool, itstool, jpegsrcva, libarchive, libffi, libiconv, liblo, libogg, libpng, libsamplerate, libsigc++, libsndfile, libtool, libusb, libvorbis, libwebsockets, libxml, libxslt, lilv, LRDF, lv, libgnurx , NSS, NSS-PEM, pango, pangomm, pcre, pixman, portaudio svn rev, raptor, rasqal, rdflib, readline , readline , redland, rubberband, serd, sord, sratom, suil, taglib, tar, termcap, tiff, util-linux , uuid , vamp-plugin-sdk, xz, zlib
  - ironmagma 5y ago
    I don't know, but it's hardly as interesting as whether someone can create a full cross-platform GUI using the ecosystem. Just a year ago the support for that was next-to-nonexistent.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      My point is that for large-scale software like a DAW, you either need a LOT more than a cross-platform GUI, or you will be reimplementing a very very large body of code that has existed in FLOSS form (but other languages) for (in some cases) decades.
      - ironmagma 5y ago
        Or just generating bindings for it. Bindgen exists for this reason. A minority of libraries such as that will require a smarter wrapper but for most it is probably sufficient to just use it in a reasonable way.

drogus 5y ago

This site is for developers, isn't it? For me this is interesting, cause I could see myself contributing to a Rust project, I'm guessing there's more people who think that way.

falcolas 5y ago
This website is for developers; the product feature page should be about the product, not the programmers.
- berkes 5y ago
  Do you consider the README on Github a "product feature page"?
  - falcolas 5y ago
    No, but I do consider a "Design Document" to be a product feature page. It's full of product features (and non-features) after all (when it's not going on about Rust). https://github.com/MeadowlarkDAW/Meadowlark/blob/main/DESIGN_DOC.md https://github.com/MeadowlarkDAW/Meadowlark/blob/main/DESIGN...
lijogdfljk 5y ago
Agreed. Furthermore, Rust is/was imo a controversial language - early on some argued it was "too difficult" to write "real" applications in it. I'm super interested in real world performance intensive applications written in Rust, Haskell, etc. Language matters to me, even if i don't plan on participating.
- falcolas 5y ago
  Rust is about as controversial as Python these days, though for different reasons. To be clear, I'm not annoyed at it being called out here (much - it gets old no matter which langauge is pimped). I'm most annoyed at how much space in the features doc, which should be about the project, not the internals.
  - drogus 5y ago
    This is an early version of the project, so this is most likely not directed at end users. Why would you even address end users at this point? Nobody will use it for a long time anyway, so in my opinion is a great move to address potential contributors in the design doc.

acomjean 5y ago

I think a lot of us who've used the open source linux tools for complex tasks have been bitten by weird UI problems and unstable code (Video editing comes to mind for me). Its much better now, but having a really solid foundation and fewer crashes is a huge win. With the new components they want to build in Rust is kind of exiting. DAWs are a pretty large complex software and a good test for Rust as a language. It will take not insignificant time to optimize and get the feature complete but optimistic this takes off and improves open source software. It seemed to me they were justifying using a new language, because its a little crazy. A lot of existing components and things could be brought together that are open source and already in C++ (or C...). Honestly as a end user, if it works and works well, you won't care (much like you use websites without worrying about the software stack that powers it). But if you want to contribute to building the software you might care.

johncoltrane 5y ago

I am a developer and I couldn't care less about what language $TOY is written in, or if it is open source or not. In this case, though, what is really advertised is the project itself, not the product, which doesn't exist and likely to not exist for a while. In this context, the language choise is probably as relevant as the design goals.

ironmagma 5y ago

There’s a comment like this on every post ending in “written in Rust.” The people who care about this include people who follow the development of the Rust ecosystem because it’s a sign of how capable the ecosystem is becoming.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Here's a list of the libraries we use in the Ardour project. Let me know how the, what is it, "crate" situation is for these or equivalent libraries: atk, atkmm, aubio, autoconf, automake, bison, boost, cairo , cairo , cairomm, cmake, cppunit, curl, expat, fftw, flac, flex, fontconfig, freetype, gdk-pixbuf, gettext, glib, glibmm, gnome-common, gnome-doc-utils, gobject-introspection, gtk-doc, gtk-engines, gtk+ X, gtk+ Quartz, gtk+, gtkmm, gtk-osx-docbook , harfbuzz, intltool, itstool, jpegsrcva, libarchive, libffi, libiconv, liblo, libogg, libpng, libsamplerate, libsigc++, libsndfile, libtool, libusb, libvorbis, libwebsockets, libxml, libxslt, lilv, LRDF, lv, libgnurx , NSS, NSS-PEM, pango, pangomm, pcre, pixman, portaudio svn rev, raptor, rasqal, rdflib, readline , readline , redland, rubberband, serd, sord, sratom, suil, taglib, tar, termcap, tiff, util-linux , uuid , vamp-plugin-sdk, xz, zlib
- ironmagma 5y ago
  I don't know, but it's hardly as interesting as whether someone can create a full cross-platform GUI using the ecosystem. Just a year ago the support for that was next-to-nonexistent.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    My point is that for large-scale software like a DAW, you either need a LOT more than a cross-platform GUI, or you will be reimplementing a very very large body of code that has existed in FLOSS form (but other languages) for (in some cases) decades.
    - ironmagma 5y ago
      Or just generating bindings for it. Bindgen exists for this reason. A minority of libraries such as that will require a smarter wrapper but for most it is probably sufficient to just use it in a reasonable way.