From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Kirill Lisovsky Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.devel Subject: Re: Roadmap and goals? Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 16:55:41 +0400 (MSD) Sender: guile-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1019307271 7851 127.0.0.1 (20 Apr 2002 12:54:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 12:54:31 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Return-path: Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 16yuNq-00022W-00 for ; Sat, 20 Apr 2002 14:54:30 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=fencepost.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 16yuNb-0003cG-00; Sat, 20 Apr 2002 08:54:15 -0400 Original-Received: from post.cnt.ru ([212.15.122.243]) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1 (Debian)) id 16yuNM-0003Zo-00; Sat, 20 Apr 2002 08:54:00 -0400 Original-Received: from ppp6-150.dial-up.cnt.ru (ppp6-150.dial-up.cnt.ru [213.85.118.150]) by post.cnt.ru (8.11.3/8.11.1) with ESMTP id g3KCsjH09163; Sat, 20 Apr 2002 16:54:46 +0400 X-X-Sender: Original-To: Errors-To: guile-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: guile-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.9 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Developers list for Guile, the GNU extensibility library List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.lisp.guile.devel:429 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.guile.devel:429 Hello! Working for a long time with a half-dozen of different Schemes in IT and CS projects, I've some "comparative impression". Tanel Tammet wrote: > (*) what are the specific benefits of using Guile. > > For example, why exactly should somebody > use Guile instead of SCM or Bigloo: > what are the specific advantages and > what is the downside. Why not use just > SCM or Bigloo (they are faster, you know :-) > There have to be answers to this question, > just that I do not know the answers. > Bigloo has nice and fast compiler but its interpreter is slow and compiler-incompatible. It makes sense if the application has to be compiled rather than interpreted. Bigloo not quite Scheme in proper-tail recursion considerations, but it's fast and may be useful for practical purposes. Unix-oriented. It has a usable JVM backend also. SCM is a good Scheme, but it has no case sensitive reader, which is a big disadvantage for some applications (XML is most important example for me). IMHO, PLT is most advanced and most promising "big" Scheme. Version 200 is a great improvement, its design and principles are reasonable and clear. A lot of libraries, active development, multiple platforms, and so on ... I like Gambit a lot, but it's not free for commercial projects. Compiler to C. Extremely robust. Chicken is relatively young but already usable. It has a solid theoretical basis and good C interface. Compiler to C. Guile - it is the slowest one, I'm afraid :-) Well, it's better _interpreter_ than Bigloo ... IMHO, it's main advantage is large installation/users base. But a mess with versions: 1.7.x , 1.6.x, 1.5.x while latest Linux distros are using 1.4.x or even 1.3.4! (1.3.4 is used by RedHat 7.2 which makes a lot of installed Guiles pretty obsolete...) Using Guile since 1999 I'm still ignoring its latest additions due to this zoo of versions... As the result, I mostly use Guile to run Scheme scripts on "just OS installed" Linux/BSD boxes. If I'm to install some Scheme, then (usually) it is not Guile... So, this is my point of view: 1. Guile may have a good future as fast and compact "R5RS SIOD" with a lot of (optional !) libraries. 2. Unification of Scheme implementations will be highly desirable from the practical point of view. Co-existence of ten "major Schemes" is a major practical disadvantage. 3. PLT is best _full-blown_ Scheme implementation now. It's designed as core + libraries. Porting (best and absent in PLT) Guile's code as PLT collections is most realistic way to unification. Best regards, Kirill Lisovsky. http://pair.com/lisovsky/ P.S. Forward of Nicolas's message to guile-user@gnu.org is the reason of this posting. Please, don't consider it as destructive :-) > ------- Start of forwarded message ------- > From: Nicolas Neuss > Subject: Re: Roadmap and goals? > Date: 19 Apr 2002 10:38:06 +0200 ... > P.S.2: I thought about sending this also to guile-user@gnu.org. I > refrained from doing so, because Tamel did not do that, and because I > do not want to be too destructive. But IMHO, also users should know > about these problems in Guile's design. So, it remains for you > maintainers to inform them... _______________________________________________ Guile-devel mailing list Guile-devel@gnu.org http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/guile-devel