Re: Logo baseline

[Arne Babenhauserheide <arne_bab@web.de>]

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

> Hello Guilers!
>
> The Guile logo has this “GNU extension language” baseline.  As Guile 3
> came out, this baseline felt odd to me, not quite corresponding to the
> way I see Guile.
What do you mean about the logo? Do you mean tagline? Where I see a
tagline is at the website: https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/

As one point of several we have there:
"Guile is an extension language platform
 …
 Guile is the GNU Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for Extensions, and
 the official extension language of the GNU project."

That’s an important statement, one which brought me to Guile, because
this gives Guile purpose beyond only being a useful language. It is the
language to extend GNU programs.

But aside from this, the website also says:
- Guile is a programming language -> create applications (this is what it starts with!)
- Extend applications (which actually talks about implementing languages in Guile)
- Guile empowers users with "practical software freedom"

The Reference manual says
"GNU's Programming and Extension Language"
https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/static/base/img/covers/guile-reference.png

So the material already states clearly that Guile is not only for extension.

However that extending applications is part of the story is an important
point for me: This also implies that it’s easy to move parts of my
application into the fastest language I can find.

It’s unlikely that Guile will beat C for raw performance *and* memory
requirements for the most performance-critical part of an application,
so knowing that I can shift that part into C (or C++ or Rust or anything
else with C-bindings) is an important point.

Being able to easily embed Guile in a C++ application is a
distinguishing feature compared to Python. That way Guile strikes a
middle-point between Python and Lua.

Also I would love to have a way to script a Godot-game with Guile:
https://godotengine.org/

> Thus, I’d propose changing the baseline.  Something that would describe
> what Guile is to me is:
>
>   GNU, fast, fun, functional
>
> What’s about you?  What’s Guile to you?  :-)

It is the language where I can best experiment with pushing the
boundaries of programming without having to write my own compiler.

Best wishes,
Arne
--
Unpolitisch sein
heißt politisch sein
ohne es zu merken