Re: 3.99.3

From: Perry E. Metzger <perry_at_piermont.com>
Date: Mon, 05 Oct 1998 11:26:53 -0400

Harvey J. Stein writes:
> Russ McManus <russell.mcmanus_at_gs.com> writes:
> > I acknowledge the fact that moving to guile would be a short term
> > loser. My assertion is that it would be a long term win to bring
> > together these two user communities. I think it can be accomplished
> > without too much pain.
>
> I don't think it'd be a long term win either. Guile development has
> been going on for years now and it's only marginally better than it
> was when it first forked from SCM.

On the other hand, there are more and more worthwhile applications
swallowing in Guile these days -- scwm, The Gimp, GnuCash, etc., etc.

The point of merging is to try to pool together the scheme talent in
one place. There just aren't enough scheme hackers to go around.

> In particular, there are lots of basic things that people have been
> complaining about for years (e.g. - slow startup time, the module
> system, lack of an object system, poor TK interface) which still
> haven't been fixed.

Part of that has to do with the lack of people working on fixing
them. If the STk folk contributed fixes, they'd probably be swallowed
in.

Myself, I don't care if Guile got swallowed by STk or vice versa, but
I would like to see ONE major scheme project the community was getting
behind, not fifteen. If the consensus is that the technology behind
STk is better, than it should be used. I am not one to want to fight
over such things. My concern is that we have a thin community that is
spread even thinner by having everyone work on their own scheme of the
week (guile, STk, MzScheme, Elk, etc., etc., etc. -- I haven't even
scratched the surface there.)

There are only so many hot schemers out there to go around, and the
language would be making enormous strides were it not for the fact
that we are all incredibly lame about working with each other. The
only reason I work with Guile right now is that it has momentum (a
bunch of apps swallowing it), not because it is technically better.

I don't care *which* scheme gets pushed hardest, so long as the good
talent all starts hacking on and improving *it*. There aren't enough
of us to be able to support the Scheme of the Week phenomenon.

Perry
Received on Mon Oct 05 1998 - 17:28:11 CEST