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guile as applications language
- To: Neil at cs dot uu dot nl, W dot Van at cs dot uu dot nl, Dyke at cs dot uu dot nl," <nwv at acm dot org>"@cs.uu.nl
- Subject: guile as applications language
- From: Han-Wen Nienhuys <hanwen at cs dot uu dot nl>
- Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 16:33:44 +0200 (CEST)
- Cc: rms at gnu dot org, guile at sourceware dot cygnus dot com
- Reply-To: hanwen at cs dot uu dot nl
>applications language, since it wasn't designed to be one, and I see
>Guile addressing those shortcomings by having:
[everything including extra chocolate, cherries and cinnamon on top]
>What do you think?
It is easy to define systems that have every positive aspect you can
imagine. That doesn't define the problem: noone is opposing
well-designed and beautiful systems. The hard part is focusing on the
hard problems and doing the gruntwork of implementing a system. If
the focus so blurred and diverse as what you sketch, I don't think
that anything will come out of it.
I sense the same lack of focus with RMS's idea to have translators for
*all* languages so as to make *all* GNU programs extensible for *all*
users, in *every* way they want. (So, I'm exaggerating, but you get
the idea). There is no focus, and worse, there have been no users with
concrete requests to provide this focus. [+]
The reason that I'm rallying [*] against all this fantasizing, is that
I fear that Our Great Leader will not coax but push developers into
pursuing his focusless vision. This would come at the expense
development on the Scheme interpreter itself, of which I am a
user. Furthermore, the lack of focus almost guarantees that the
project would fail, and that would leave a set of frustrated
developers. That's even worse.
Please don't get me wrong, I am trying to be constructive by
contributing whatever patch to GUILE I can make, but all this
fantasizing just doesn't get any work done.
Let's not fantasize about we are next year, let's work on reaching
tomorrow's goal.
Han-Wen
[+] Well, I haven't seen them in any case.
[*] I have been doing the best I can to write down convincing
arguments, I hope someone appreciates it, or at least takes note of
them.
--
Han-Wen Nienhuys | hanwen@cs.uu.nl | http://www.cs.uu.nl/~hanwen/