"Perry E. Metzger" <perry_at_piermont.com> writes:
> Harvey J. Stein writes:
> >
> > You mean egcs? :-)
>
> egcs == gcc.
>
> Mainline gcc development is dead. egcs is the same compiler under a
> new name.
Tell RMS that. It's still far from the case.
In any case it's incidental - for most of the development time of C
what's been available has mostly been a large number of commercial
compilers. C still made it big. 1 implementation isn't necessary,
it's beside the point. TCL/Tk, Java, & Perl have made it in their
niches because of specific needs + flagrant marketeering. I challenge
you to find 1 true sentence in the introduction to the Camel book.
> > > 2) C code from different compilers mix just fine. Scheme is so
> > > loosely defined except at its very core that this isn't
> > > possible in our world. Furthermore, things like foreign
> > > function interfaces and large packages like the STk Tk
> > > functionality can't be ported easily.
> >
> > So, what's missing is a standard that's sufficiently rich to allow
> > good work to be done in a C/unix/windows centric world. The issue
> > isn't proliferation of incompatible implementations. The issue is
> > sufficiently rich standards.
>
> You'll never get a sufficiently rich standard.
Why? It seems that C was. All that's needed is a standard FFI for
interfacing to C code. Then all the C libs/X/unix/everything else
come in for free.
> > > > 3. Put your money where your mouth is.
> > > >
> > > > If you think it's a good idea to merge Scheme
> > > > implementations, then do it! Why argue about it on the net?
> > > > Or is the idea to try to convince developers to do the work
> > > > for you?
> > >
> > > I could do a "merge" myself, but the result would be three schemes
> > > instead of two. Without the cooperation of the STk and Guile
> > > communities, what would the point be?
> >
> > May the best implementation win.
>
> Do you care if people use scheme or not?
>
> If the exercise here is just to have an elegant way of wasting time,
> I'd prefer to be playing croquet. To me, the point of hacking on code
> is to have people use it, not to find baroque ways of amusing myself.
Shall we compare who's contributed the most code/docs/...?
I'd love scheme to win.
What's needed is not argument - it's code. Stop writing messages &
start writing apps.
Guile might make a difference not because it's a good scheme
implementation but because it's backed by the FSF & has already been
incorporated into scwm & Gnome. People stuff it into their apps not
because it's good but because it's backed. Who cares, as long as we
can write in scheme...
--
Harvey J. Stein
BFM Financial Research
hjstein_at_bfr.co.il
Received on Tue Oct 06 1998 - 22:46:08 CEST