From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Arne Babenhauserheide Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.user Subject: Re: How to make GNU Guile more successful Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2017 10:00:10 +0100 Message-ID: <8737eqkc0o.fsf@web.de> References: <9386102A-AA6C-4CC1-82EE-7758106A435C@openmailbox.org> <87mvcz4x43.fsf@web.de> <378B6C0D-EFBD-4999-A4D1-6CEF7467AD83@openmailbox.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1488791379 21479 195.159.176.226 (6 Mar 2017 09:09:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2017 09:09:39 +0000 (UTC) Cc: guile-user@gnu.org To: Alejandro Sanchez Original-X-From: guile-user-bounces+guile-user=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Mar 06 10:09:32 2017 Return-path: Envelope-to: guile-user@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1ckoe0-0004Fw-Io for guile-user@m.gmane.org; Mon, 06 Mar 2017 10:09:28 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:42527 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ckoe4-0008Ny-Ni for guile-user@m.gmane.org; Mon, 06 Mar 2017 04:09:32 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:48328) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ckodc-0008Hp-To for guile-user@gnu.org; Mon, 06 Mar 2017 04:09:06 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ckodY-0008Rt-UR for guile-user@gnu.org; Mon, 06 Mar 2017 04:09:04 -0500 Original-Received: from mout.web.de ([212.227.17.12]:56381) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ckodY-0008Rb-Ky for guile-user@gnu.org; Mon, 06 Mar 2017 04:09:00 -0500 Original-Received: from kaverne ([85.212.89.187]) by smtp.web.de (mrweb102 [213.165.67.124]) with ESMTPSA (Nemesis) id 0LiCsx-1byoMk1oOZ-00nNb9; Mon, 06 Mar 2017 10:08:57 +0100 In-reply-to: <378B6C0D-EFBD-4999-A4D1-6CEF7467AD83@openmailbox.org> X-Provags-ID: V03:K0:RlZPRq7q1zGMgWsJ7Q+Dr15RKA3b9BUjdInfKam2pmyMedm+Ysn 9O+/Jd1ws+5s+GYNeS/Db4wgjOKZSPPvn4SHubpkgS5IyzQbzi53OB5VGIqMnCeAG56Xzpr ceIGedQk2113EnK8fJZw7CIU+6FDFmguFB1IAO3L5zHOxkQjS87u/LmKfIIvbeCTGz9ltjs /4Jur/ehvW49MDKFCWfRw== X-UI-Out-Filterresults: notjunk:1;V01:K0:HDXnHd4hvgY=:KKHwzCYhn5SvRc9yoyrsb1 wPdzSKKoG2VE4gfCDeeIjN3AjADoa9a/WstYFJnkX+xqn2x7bTSgNJhGnTLd/uPOCr1o1vN6Q mlVFLXPN+tfMa2RwSBKceNNn5iNlhT2duMaUm2h+WQY1uiIj4E1V2Lgk1J3tiMvBFutqSZddD /vmCTCKRFkFPsfBbWtuiUHO5ZMHYA5hO/0jqdxGbIbkq/uTb6xnHAraLJf3C6pAv9og1SBRLX hoIWkykxnXQGZ3WDiKm3LCvFbkWbyeifScXa70GjeoLw8U9ytYWb1IbrRM5S2dUHOzpWxusVE 7BDRWxlvv/pWlWVy7yicLpkttnAfMaKf10uUEi6lOvvm5XQ9oG+oFO58WiHMlBb5N+fY9Wb9t 3MK+9xsANwQbJ4x0gSiZSSViUovW9lywzxknbTD6o6BmXpEobAE9/wnVxGCNnSgt4lwOk8OrM J9WGUbzcHvZXV8ztd2PVR8ykZ2DUfDttom0nlJFyN5Eg4N4T4zkyZgAR2x6FNHm1K6MIMnljI AFiS9qbqSts9xIvs9jckmMh0nvNdlwFIfg1MOVL6absBCRGr+WX/dZall+WHJJ8ShLiR7kjh8 f4Ev7IINAAaDJqHpUfvpL16wuyseChC/VBjnnmf1I2fqdZdqAKWEvGOia+Ri9VqLSe3U5NdqY 9VVhX4YZXElQ944+zwQN5lXhisjMFIxsoo7rZf41dZP96vWgfx0hn5SJjL+rNz+QKoNoi2d+X ssKCjNg2Lem8NDoKcpWlGJh3JXiv6WDkzLQpZIQcAuBccXx20cFmH+QPAq12ryhtBO3LFStk X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] [fuzzy] X-Received-From: 212.227.17.12 X-BeenThere: guile-user@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: General Guile related discussions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guile-user-bounces+guile-user=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "guile-user" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.lisp.guile.user:13422 Archived-At: Alejandro Sanchez writes: > Thank you for you responses, I will try to respond to them all in one email. > > >> About Emacs + Geiser as the default development environment > Emacs is a power tool. Giving someone Emacs to write a simple script is like handing someone a jackhammer to nail plywood together. OK, maybe I’m stretching the analogy a bit, but when I think IDE I imagine something that handholds people, for the better or worse. Sure, you could offer some sort of pre-configured Emacs setup, but what’s the point of that? The point of that is that every developer starts by doing small things. Therefore the small startup things should work well. I know many people at work who’ve been using Emacs for years but mostly limit their use to what it provides by default. What works well from the start is where most people will stay. And that’s not unreasonable: If it doesn’t work now, how are the chances that it will be better than something which works well right away? >> About the syntax > I know about wisp, but that looks like an awkward cross-breed between Python and Lisp. Lisp syntax is simply something one needs to get over. For me it really clicked when I understood that Lisp syntax is not really a syntax, it’s the AST (sort of). Wisp reminds me of those people who use the arrow keys Vim and never leave insert-mode, in the end they just have a convoluted Nano. Maybe Wisp will help people, I don’t know, but it didn’t do anything for me. The difference to vim in insert mode is that wisp provides all features of scheme. The opening and closing parens just look different :) (or rather: they are merged into the existing indentation, so this reduces duplication of information) >> Closing remark > The question for someone shopping around for languages is: what is the selling point for Guile (or Scheme)? Being a programmable programming language sounds cool, but what does it let me do? Nothing on Guile's website tells me “look at how easy this is to solve in Guile, you cannot do this in other languages”. What would that be? I don’t know, I’m just a layman. The topic of the thread is “how to make Guile more successful”, and I most of those are technical points, so I’m afraid that discussing popularity is all I can contribute. You can for example build wisp ;) And "natural script writing" would have been much harder (and much more mechanical work) in other languages. In most languages it would have required parsing the text by hand and explicitly extracting code and handing it to some function to execute it. Best wishes, Arne