Re: Newbie thoughts on Guile Hall + Guix

[Blake Shaw <blake@nonconstructivism.com>]

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!

[end rant, thanks for humoring me]

-- 
“In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni”