From: Chris Vine <vine35792468@gmail.com>
To: guile-user@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Newbie thoughts on Guile Hall + Guix
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2022 19:46:57 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20220208194657.ed7afe59b80eeb9c7ce880f3@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87a6f1mtz3.fsf@nonconstructivism.com>
On Tue, 08 Feb 2022 19:19:06 +0700
Blake Shaw <blake@nonconstructivism.com> wrote:
> Vijay Marupudi <vijaymarupudi@gatech.edu> writes:
> > I don't think it's fair to say that using packages in Guile just as
> > easy/hard as other languages. Python / Javascript make this incredibly
> > easy, and their ecosystem is evidence for that success. Their package
> > managers have flaws, but they have benefits too, and those benefits
> > would be great for Guile.
>
> I would just like to tag onto this convo that I agree that its not fair
> to say that Guile is easy and will quickly bless those who endeavor to
> learn it with superpowers. My experience w/Racket was very smooth and I
> got working in it very quickly. I was a contracted to work on a project in
> Python a few months ago and without ever studying it I was able to
> start doing production work in it (ridiculous how intuitive it is,
> really). Before I started learning Guile I read Edwin Brady's book on
> Idris and found Idris much easier to get from start to end of small
> projects I was working on (because there is a well written book on it).
>
> While Guile has become my favorite programming language, it took me
> several months to learn how to navigate & figure out how to navigate the
> SRFIs, how to plan a program so that I can know what to expect along the
> way (what features I'll need to implement myself, etc) before I was able
> to get productive in it beyond the realm of Guix. And I think most would
> agree that Scheme is a less advanced language than Idris (I did some
> category theory in school so I have some intuition for the ideas, but
> still). And to be honest, I still hit plenty of road blocks.
>
> There were definitely some times where I was digging around trying to
> figure out how to do things and came across messages in the archives
> saying "its so easy you just do [vague hand wavy explanation]". And I
> found that quite frustrating, like there is an insularity meant to weed
> out the bad apples. And when this topic popped up on the guix list a few
> weeks ago some others expressed similar concerns, folks who are doing
> very impressive work. A programming language should never make
> programmers feel dumb -- it should make us feel empowered!
Everything is capable of improvement but the guile manual is a manual
and not I think primarily intended as a language tutorial (although
Chapter 3 of the manual does have a very cursory introduction to the
scheme language). If you are looking for a tutorial, I suggest reading
https://www.scheme.com/tspl4/ . It covers the R6RS flavour, but at the
tutorial level I don't think the various current standard flavours
(R5RS, R6RS and R7RS) matter too much.
I would be reluctant to see the manual turned into a tutorial if that
were to mean abridging any of its current completeness.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2022-02-08 19:46 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 59+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2022-02-08 12:19 Newbie thoughts on Guile Hall + Guix Blake Shaw
2022-02-08 19:46 ` Chris Vine [this message]
2022-02-09 15:18 ` Ideas for making Guile easier to approach Christine Lemmer-Webber
2022-02-09 20:33 ` Daniel Tornabene
2022-02-09 21:05 ` Maxime Devos
2022-02-09 23:06 ` Keith Wright
2022-02-09 21:05 ` Olivier Dion via General Guile related discussions
2022-02-09 21:07 ` Maxime Devos
2023-10-05 14:15 ` Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide
2022-02-09 23:01 ` Chris Vine
2022-02-10 0:56 ` Timothy Sample
2022-02-10 10:01 ` Ricardo Wurmus
2022-02-10 1:32 ` Blake Shaw
2022-02-10 2:02 ` paul
2022-02-10 11:27 ` Mikael Djurfeldt
2022-02-10 14:34 ` Leo Butler
2022-02-10 15:58 ` Mikael Djurfeldt
2022-02-10 18:25 ` Olivier Dion via General Guile related discussions
2023-09-27 19:29 ` Christine Lemmer-Webber
2023-09-28 12:30 ` Maxime Devos
2022-02-09 6:28 ` Newbie thoughts on Guile Hall + Guix Catonano
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2022-02-10 12:42 Blake Shaw
2022-02-09 10:30 Blake Shaw
2022-02-09 14:13 ` Olivier Dion via General Guile related discussions
2022-02-09 20:05 ` Aleix Conchillo Flaqué
2022-02-09 20:28 ` Maxime Devos
2022-02-09 21:13 ` Aleix Conchillo Flaqué
2022-02-10 18:03 ` Vivien
2022-02-09 3:23 Blake Shaw
2022-02-08 16:13 Blake Shaw
2022-02-06 13:40 dsmich
2022-02-05 20:01 Christine Lemmer-Webber
2022-02-05 22:15 ` Mikael Djurfeldt
2022-02-05 23:19 ` Jose Antonio Ortega Ruiz
2022-02-06 14:09 ` Ricardo Wurmus
2022-02-06 0:40 ` Christine Lemmer-Webber
2022-02-06 4:54 ` Aleix Conchillo Flaqué
2022-02-06 13:14 ` Mikael Djurfeldt
2022-02-06 14:03 ` Ricardo Wurmus
2022-02-06 14:28 ` Vijay Marupudi
2022-02-06 14:53 ` Ognen Duzlevski
2022-02-06 15:13 ` Maxime Devos
2022-02-06 15:29 ` Vijay Marupudi
2022-02-06 21:34 ` Zelphir Kaltstahl
2022-02-07 2:11 ` David Pirotte
2022-02-07 2:47 ` David Pirotte
2022-02-07 19:21 ` Zelphir Kaltstahl
2022-02-07 22:35 ` adriano
2022-02-05 22:16 ` Vivien
2022-02-06 2:53 ` Zelphir Kaltstahl
2022-02-06 16:35 ` Olivier Dion via General Guile related discussions
2022-02-06 16:44 ` Vivien Kraus
2022-02-06 22:10 ` Olivier Dion via General Guile related discussions
2022-02-06 16:55 ` Maxime Devos
2022-02-06 22:05 ` Olivier Dion via General Guile related discussions
2022-02-06 22:32 ` Maxime Devos
2022-02-06 23:00 ` Olivier Dion via General Guile related discussions
2022-02-06 21:37 ` Zelphir Kaltstahl
2022-02-06 22:12 ` Olivier Dion via General Guile related discussions
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