syncase merged to master

syncase merged to master

[Andy Wingo]

Hi all,

I went ahead and merged the syncase branch to master. So syntax-case /
syntax-rules macros in master will be hygienic with respect to modules
in addition to lexical bindings.

If I might rhapsodize a moment: it's fashionable in the Scheme world to
criticize Guile. There are four major points:

  1) Syncase macros are unhygienic with respect to modules
  2) Syncase macros not available by default
  3) Guile is slow (many flavors of this argument)
  4) Guile doesn't even do unicode

We're fixing all of these. Within the next couple months. We're doing
great work, and we should be proud. #scheme can go to hell.

Andy
-- 
http://wingolog.org/

Re: syncase merged to master

[Julian Graham]

> We're fixing all of these. Within the next couple months. We're doing
> great work, and we should be proud. #scheme can go to hell.

Well, *you're* fixing most of them.  (For which, by the way, I am
obscenely grateful.)

On a serious note, though, once the current HEAD makes it into a
release, I humbly suggest that some kind of marketing blitz is in
order.  Can the FSF / GNU project help with publicity in any way?
Should we get a head start on developing some examples that showcase
Guile's new abilities?


Regards,
Julian

Re: syncase merged to master

[Andy Wingo]

Hey Julian,

On Mon 20 Apr 2009 22:56, Julian Graham <joolean@gmail.com> writes:

>> We're fixing all of these. Within the next couple months. We're doing
>> great work, and we should be proud. #scheme can go to hell.
>
> Well, *you're* fixing most of them

While it's true I have had a bit of time lately to poke at things,
you've been looking at R6RS syntactic integration, Ludovic has been on
the R6RS library problem (in addition to doing great work on the GC),
Neil does great work with the manual and on subtle bugs, Mike will bring
us something nice with Unicode support... and then besides the past that
we are building on, there are those waiting in the wings to hack Elisp
and threads and persistent data structures and better Emacs integration
and on and on and on.

It's a lovely time to hack Guile :-)

> some kind of marketing blitz is in order. Can the FSF / GNU project
> help with publicity in any way?

I think you're totally right. FSF/GNU can help, but we need to have the
vision -- strongly articulated, so as to cut through cobwebs of the
past.

But, and this is my perception, I think we have to be ready for the push
when it comes. Documentation is /really/ important in that regard. As
far as the new developments are concerned, we need to have a depth of
documentation in place -- and already some of the stuff I wrote a few
months ago needs updating already. 

So I think we need to have our ducks in a row before we really start
pushing FSF/GNU.

Andy
-- 
http://wingolog.org/

Re: syncase merged to master

[Julian Graham]

> While it's true I have had a bit of time lately to poke at things,
> you've been looking at R6RS syntactic integration, Ludovic has been on
> the R6RS library problem (in addition to doing great work on the GC),
> Neil does great work with the manual and on subtle bugs, Mike will bring
> us something nice with Unicode support... and then besides the past that
> we are building on, there are those waiting in the wings to hack Elisp
> and threads and persistent data structures and better Emacs integration
> and on and on and on.


Oh, yes, of course -- I certainly didn't mean to gloss over anyone's
contributions.  That came out wrong.  Reading guile-devel is like
candy these days because of all wonderful things everyone's working
on.


> It's a lovely time to hack Guile :-)

Tha's a much better way to put it, thanks.  :)

Re: syncase merged to master

[Neil Jerram]

Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:

> While it's true I have had a bit of time lately to poke at things,
> you've been looking at R6RS syntactic integration, Ludovic has been on
> the R6RS library problem (in addition to doing great work on the GC),
> Neil does great work with the manual and on subtle bugs, Mike will bring
> us something nice with Unicode support... and then besides the past that
> we are building on, there are those waiting in the wings to hack Elisp
> and threads and persistent data structures and better Emacs integration
> and on and on and on.

And Julian did major work on SRFI-18 threads!

> It's a lovely time to hack Guile :-)

I'm pleased that you think so.  Tool-wise I think Git has been a
massive help, so major kudos to Ludovic for that.  Otherwise, I think
the main things Guile needs to encourage development are senses on one
hand of stability, and on the other of a clear release plan; so I have
tried to do what I can to help with that.

>> some kind of marketing blitz is in order. Can the FSF / GNU project
>> help with publicity in any way?
>
> I think you're totally right. FSF/GNU can help, but we need to have the
> vision -- strongly articulated, so as to cut through cobwebs of the
> past.

From a GNU project point of view, I think the vision has been clear
for a long time: an easily embeddable extension language library,
allowing GNU applications to be extended in several different
languages.  We're closer now to that than we've ever been before, I
think.

> But, and this is my perception, I think we have to be ready for the push
> when it comes. Documentation is /really/ important in that regard. As
> far as the new developments are concerned, we need to have a depth of
> documentation in place -- and already some of the stuff I wrote a few
> months ago needs updating already. 

Yes - except that I wouldn't want in-depth documentation to delay the
2.0 release a lot!  I'd rather get all the fantastic new stuff out
there.

> So I think we need to have our ducks in a row before we really start
> pushing FSF/GNU.

But what are the ducks?  Ideally I think they'd be example
applications, with beautiful and useful scripting code extending
them.  But I'm not sure how we can come up with such examples very
quickly.

Regards,
        Neil

Re: syncase merged to master

[Neil Jerram]

Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> I went ahead and merged the syncase branch to master. So syntax-case /
> syntax-rules macros in master will be hygienic with respect to modules
> in addition to lexical bindings.

Cool, thanks.  I still need to go through your response to my
comments, will do that soon.

> If I might rhapsodize a moment: it's fashionable in the Scheme world to
> criticize Guile. There are four major points:
>
>   1) Syncase macros are unhygienic with respect to modules
>   2) Syncase macros not available by default
>   3) Guile is slow (many flavors of this argument)
>   4) Guile doesn't even do unicode
>
> We're fixing all of these. Within the next couple months. We're doing
> great work, and we should be proud.

Yes indeed, and thanks in large part to you.  As far as the criticism
is concerned, though, I'm not sure what's there is totally rational,
so I wouldn't expect that it will go away.

My impression is that Guile is mentioned quite rarely on the general
Scheme lists; when it is mentioned, it is most often as part of a poll
of implementation behaviours.  Guile had a reputation for a while of
not being completely R5RS compliant - which was true, but based on a
very small number of quite corner cases.  We fixed those, and - as
shown by the list above - the criticism has moved on.  In my view the
biggest point since then has been slowness - which was true also,
although in many scenarios unimportant.  And as you say, we're
addressing that.

(I think there may be a sense, in the wider Scheme community, that (i)
Guile has an unfair advantage in terms of usage because of being the
GNU project's scheme, and (ii) that it isn't quite proper because of
being developed by non-academics; and we could also be criticized for
not taking more part in wider discussions.  Perhaps that is part of
the reason why there is always another criticism.)

> #scheme can go to hell.

FWIW, what I care most about is feedback from Guile's existing users
and from people trying it out.  If _they_ are concerned about hygienic
syncase, I'll try to look into that (and then Andy will actually fix
it :-)).
   
Regards,
        Neil

Re: syncase merged to master

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello!

(A week later...)

Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:

> I went ahead and merged the syncase branch to master. So syntax-case /
> syntax-rules macros in master will be hygienic with respect to modules
> in addition to lexical bindings.

Great!

> If I might rhapsodize a moment: it's fashionable in the Scheme world to
> criticize Guile. There are four major points:
>
>   1) Syncase macros are unhygienic with respect to modules
>   2) Syncase macros not available by default
>   3) Guile is slow (many flavors of this argument)
>   4) Guile doesn't even do unicode
>
> We're fixing all of these. Within the next couple months. We're doing
> great work, and we should be proud. #scheme can go to hell.

Eh eh.  :-)  You've been working on points 1--3.  We just need to
benchmark things a bit to see how far we've got.

As for publicity, I think we (eventually) need to advertise it among GNU
hackers and users.  Most of them know Scheme, or at least some flavor of
Lisp like Elisp, and they're probably sold to the idea of extensible
applications.  However, they may have come to disregard Guile as an
unfinished, slow implementation.  And that's where you come in.  :-)

Thanks!

Ludo'.