From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Erik Edrosa Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.user Subject: Re: How to make GNU Guile more successful Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2017 22:09:54 -0500 Message-ID: References: <9386102A-AA6C-4CC1-82EE-7758106A435C@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 1488683430 4246 195.159.176.226 (5 Mar 2017 03:10:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2017 03:10:30 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.7.0 To: Alejandro Sanchez , guile-user@gnu.org Original-X-From: guile-user-bounces+guile-user=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Mar 05 04:10:24 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 1ckMYv-0008Qz-RI for guile-user@m.gmane.org; Sun, 05 Mar 2017 04:10:22 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:37365 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ckMZ0-0004kO-9M for guile-user@m.gmane.org; Sat, 04 Mar 2017 22:10:26 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:42290) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ckMYb-0004k3-I5 for guile-user@gnu.org; Sat, 04 Mar 2017 22:10:02 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ckMYa-0000mA-2N for guile-user@gnu.org; Sat, 04 Mar 2017 22:10:01 -0500 Original-Received: from mail-pf0-x22b.google.com ([2607:f8b0:400e:c00::22b]:34990) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ckMYZ-0000m1-Og for guile-user@gnu.org; Sat, 04 Mar 2017 22:09:59 -0500 Original-Received: by mail-pf0-x22b.google.com with SMTP id j5so46406291pfb.2 for ; Sat, 04 Mar 2017 19:09:58 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20161025; h=subject:to:references:from:message-id:date:user-agent:mime-version :in-reply-to:content-transfer-encoding; bh=HsUVgWY3Ti7iQUP6SdUCxiWVsRQyKdBOkcMzQp7Pk+Y=; b=EVpj4llH3Lv3QkH+1kSETx6g2QBu5oQzeaFDybbOtdll/Szw2F7LaHTx2i3L0mKj7a a3efMfjhzn6KNMEgrSBPckqLf5SokCGqUSuEa45faA/yvu4xX2vgBM9CQz9AgoItH3t8 5Q1LyG/wwjpDOmawSEBjHA9wcAXevNuyOWDGSzC1o2kCvvXNHGF4WSxS9t95zlcJeYNE jg6VibWrBDCIPN2qh3laJxRggKs32eeJaouc3+Q85K46RViQofJHs5F6VCGR1J03M72u BOAaQPfOhy7tr/ja4LnMGTpOOG0rRVdwNgZJKPLlUU6fi+dsj4aLA++XBvOaU2WuVlkT O5hA== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20161025; h=x-gm-message-state:subject:to:references:from:message-id:date :user-agent:mime-version:in-reply-to:content-transfer-encoding; bh=HsUVgWY3Ti7iQUP6SdUCxiWVsRQyKdBOkcMzQp7Pk+Y=; b=EtCu05oqKuEgFqgbFVISlsxDpjqTL0tGEW+LroMJBvgC1mEQqueoZl7la145ShlVOG 8lPaQR5WXN/cUlKJ7Qk+vSQ4H5FodD6GxjXnqYiR+UinZg+GBxAYdYgsgV9Z28QtyhgL UAHuKoDiHqD0zIBrvflkGR8D+Hg6poU2iqrCnohf6J6F0mRhCmLxoWNlS6juYso95hl+ GwUsPrB1imvquFqb5gjoT5QVk2esAazTUGbpi12J6XYqZN/Ycn+qxSewP+R7xPrEv6NX tPQQzWGJq5YTrUeKnLei7lBqAPqRWn+B3AA/KRxOLKLaS3QoTqCs6V68y9BvTCqNXeQq COaw== X-Gm-Message-State: AMke39kHymBffdD3jDVga9ChjBuqc2o5RVVhZfKfk9sIeR/beEo3XPKP7Fd9F6GyzM2G0A== X-Received: by 10.98.219.3 with SMTP id f3mr12618075pfg.181.1488683396975; Sat, 04 Mar 2017 19:09:56 -0800 (PST) Original-Received: from ?IPv6:2602:306:c5c9:a3e0:eece:d6e9:deeb:a888? ([2602:306:c5c9:a3e0:eece:d6e9:deeb:a888]) by smtp.googlemail.com with ESMTPSA id y5sm4028660pfd.33.2017.03.04.19.09.55 (version=TLS1_2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128); Sat, 04 Mar 2017 19:09:56 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <9386102A-AA6C-4CC1-82EE-7758106A435C@openmailbox.org> X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 2607:f8b0:400e:c00::22b 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:13402 Archived-At: On 03/04/2017 06:41 PM, Alejandro Sanchez wrote: > If I may add my two cents as a Scheme layman: the question is not so much about making Guile more popular, but about making Scheme itself more popular. > > One big reason for Python’s popularity is something I haven’t seen mentioned in this thread so far: if you know pseudocode you basically know Python already. Of course this is hyperbolic, there are a lot of finer details to Python, but the superficial simplicity of Python makes you think you already know the language and that you can get started right away. By the time you encounter the more arcane aspects of Python you have already invested enough time into it that you will put up with learning something new. > > Scheme on the other hand is weird; weird in a good way, but still weird. For me the reason for picking up Scheme was working my way through SICP, but even before that I had heard of the Lisp family. Every time I tried to find out what the fuss was about Lisp all I could find was nebulous concepts like “it’s a programmable programming language” without explaining what that even meant and why I would ever want to use it. > > Of course once I got over the weird parentheses and I understood why they are actually a beneficial aspect I liked it. Yet, even after getting into Scheme there are problems. The r5rs standard is pretty limited, and so every implementation does its own thing. There was not even a standard module system until r6rs. Unfortunately r6rs never got fully adopted by any of the major implementations, so we are back to where we were with r5rs more or less. r7rs-small looks like it could finally fill in the most glaring gaps, and r7rs-large is still nowhere done. > > All this is very frustrating, and getting into a new language is a long-term commitment to learn something new. When faced with Python, Ruby, JavaScript, Lua and Scheme, it’s easy to go with the flow and just use what everyone else is using. > > I think someone here mentioned the lack of a proper Scheme IDE, other than Dr. Racket for Racket. I don’t use IDEs anymore, but I can see how that can be a problem for other people who only want to do intermediate scripting rather than write entire applications. Writing a full IDE would be quite a lot of work, so perhaps integrating with existing IDEs would be better. Think something like Geiser for programs other than Emacs. There is the “language server protocol" by Microsoft, the idea is to have a standardised protocol that can be supported by a language server and an editor application. > https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol > > I know it’s Microsoft, but this is just a specification. With this protocol one would write a Scheme server that receives instructions form the editor via RPC and sends the result back to the server via RPC as well. This would allow using the same Scheme server regardless of the editor (Emacs, Vim, Neovim, Eclipse, …). I had wanted to write something like this for Neovim myself, but I don’t know enough of Scheme yet. > > I hope these ramblings of mine offer something useful from an outsider perspective to you guys. > I think one issue when you want to compare languages like Python to Scheme is that these languages are dominated by a single implementation. Python, Ruby, Go, Rust, Clojure, and many others have a single dominate implementation. The compatibility of libraries isn't something devs usually have to worry about (except for breaking changes in the language like Python 2 to Python 3). I agree with how r5rs standard is pretty limited, languages with multiple implementations tend to have pretty large standards so that these implementations are somewhat compatible. I am liking the direction of r7rs and I hope it will bring scheme implementations closer together. Probably the other option for scheme would be for everyone to get behind a single implementation like Chez Scheme. Of course that isn't the only thing needed to make Scheme or Guile more popular. I believe a programming language needs a somewhat unique and powerful library or framework, an awesome application to show off the power of the language, good tooling, and some luck. The language server protocol is pretty cool and I would like to see a lisp implement it. An IDE for a lisp obviously needs to implement more features to be useful, I believe being able to easily interact with a REPL is one of those.