Re: my latest blog post

[Julien Lepiller <julien@lepiller.eu>]

Le 2018-06-07 17:25, Catonano a écrit :
> I just published my latest blog post
> 
> In this post I discuss Guix
> 
> And I discuss Guile too
> 
> I understand that the language is strong and I expect someone to be
> upset
> 
> But I feel this is due
> 
> Happy reading
> 
> http://catonano.v22018025836661967.nicesrv.de/the-gnu-community.html

Hi,

that was a long but interesting reading :)

I won't be able to address your main points, about the Guile and the 
broader GNU
community. That's because even though I'm part of Guix, I haven't really 
interacted
with them (yet?). My only interactions were through Guix and a GHM I 
attended when
I wasn't a contributor to anything. I remember it as a friendly event 
though, so
your post is a bit of a surprise to me. Let me try and address some of 
the minor
points instead.

I read you're having trouble to find information from the section 
titles. Info manuals
have an index where it's easier to find things. But actually, what helps 
me the most
is to ignore the `info` command and open either the full .texi source or 
the "html
in one page" version. Then I can do full-text search, which is a lot 
quicker. Does
anyone know if there is a similar facility in the info program?

I've also found that GNU documentations were not excessively easy to 
navigate.
It's sometimes a bit hard to find information on something fuzzy like 
"what's the
function that returns only part of a string again?" or "is there 
something that can
grow like a list, but with O(1) access?", but it's a great document to 
have when
reading existing code: each procedure is very detailed and in a language 
that I find
easy to understand (although it sometimes refers to another part of the 
manual).

Ludo proposed to create a separate document for user stories and 
tutorials on how
to do specific things, Rekado suggested creating video tutorials 
explaining specific
points. I think this is the right direction.

About your concerns on recommending Guix to others, I think you're 
mistaken. I actually
discovered Guile through Guix and I haven't have any bad experience. I'm 
not on #guile
because people on #guix are generous enough to answer unrelated stupid 
questions :)
Guile was even my first functional programming language and I managed to 
learn just
enough of it to be able to create packages and system configurations. 
All of that
from reading existing code, copying parts that looked related to what I 
wanted to do
and not knowing what I was doing at all :). So from experience, you can 
use and even
contribute to guix without ever going to #guile. You just need a good 
tutorial from the
internet. My point is, if you don't want to recommand the guile 
community, you can still
recommand the friendly guix community.