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Re: new to guile, how to go ahead ?


thi <ttn@mingle.glug.org> writes:

> Randolph Fritz writes:
> 
>  > I am getting lost in the docs, unfortunately.  Is there currently any
>  > way to learn the guile libraries other than simply reading the
>  > source?  Are there any slib docs?  And do any of the Scheme books
>  > cover the ground of systems programming in scheme?
> 
> there is another way to learn: write documentation.  (i must admit i'm
> not a great adherent to this method, myself. :-/ )
> 

What has kept me from this approach is that it is _very_ difficult: to
document some part of guile, you have to look at the sources that implement
that part (say fluids.c). But to understand what is going on in the source,
you really need to understand how that part fits into the whole, what
functionality it provides on the scheme level etc. 

I think a more feasible approach would be to take the existing docs and
sources, try to figure out how it works, ask questions about the
ununderstandable parts on this list and then take the answers one hopefully
gets and glue them all together. That way everybody shares a little of the
agony of writing docs: those that know have to express their knowledge and
those who don't know have to (read: volunteer to) put in the legwork
associated with documenting. And we'll end up with docs that answer all the
questions :)

David


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