I’m presently facing a programming task to work on, and am thinking through which language to work on it in. It’s a simple calendar & address book app, so it needs to work with vCard/iCalendar and network/VFS type things (at least HTTP). It also needs a GUI; preferably GTK+.

Contenders:

• OCaml. I really like this language. Further, the Ocamlnet library integrates with the GTK+ event loop, so I can get the networking support nicely. However, it does seem like I’ll need to write my own vObject parsers & engine (not very difficult, as it’s a relatively simple format).
• Python. My old favorite language, but it’s fallen into relative disuse in my work. It does, however, have a relatively thorough-looking VObject library.
• C++. I also like this language. GTKmm is excellent, and it’d give me an excuse to learn Boost. I’m not sure if I’d need to roll my own vCard stuff or not.
• Common Lisp. Nifty, but its lack of good integration with GTK+ (and GTKServer doesn’t seem like a desirable option).
• Java. In this case, I’d do my GUI in Swing. I’m sure it has a vCard/iCal library somewhere, but I’d still feel kinda icky. It’s Java.

There isn’t a clear choice. Everything has its tradeoffs.