This is the mail archive of the guile@cygnus.com mailing list for the guile project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]

Re: guile: going the way of DEATH




	Although the tone of his mail was quite provocative (I think he did it 
on purpose), I must admit I agree with what Alexander said. This corresponds
to my impression of guile. I looked into extension languages only a few days
ago, so my feeling is that of a newbie in *using* those languages.

If it can be of some help, here are the impressions I got at a first glance: 

	* The docs are absolutely out of date. This makes guile unusable
unless you're a guile developper yourself. You can't ask people to learn the
code by heart in order to be able to use a package. This is a real showstopper 
for new people to get involved too.

	* Another showstopper is the apparent lack of will to help newcomers
solving their problems. OK, it's August. But I don't see how you can expect to 
get more people involved in the developpement if you don't help them getting
started.

	* You can't either expect people to use the snapshots. People need
stable releases. I'm not against the idea of moving the API, if it can improve 
it. But people must be informed of the incompatible changes from stable
release to stable release.

	* As far as I could see, but again, this is a newbie view, the gh API
seems strange, uncomplete and inconsistent. Some examples:

	- Why using so many functions with just a `return' line, instead of a
        set of standardized macros ? Something like BOOLEAN_P instead of
        gh_boolean_p.

	- What's the point in having gh_number_p but not gh_integer_p and the
        like, if people will need to mix the APIs anyway ?

	- A guy that discovers gh_catch and logically looks for gh_throw, but
        doesn't find it ...

	- etc etc. All this looks like a mess.


	Again, my view is the one of somebody discovering the package, but I
think guile developpers currently lack feelings from people like me. I hope
this can help identify the caveats in the project. I've found out about Elk
after a recent mail on this list, and I immediately switched to it. In one
day reading/coding I could do much more things with it than in a week
investigating guile sources. That's the point.

-- 
    /     /   _   _       Didier Verna        http://www.inf.enst.fr/~verna/
 - / / - / / /_/ /      E.N.S.T. INF C214        mailto:verna@inf.enst.fr
/_/ / /_/ / /__ /        46 rue Barrault        Tel.   (33) 01 45 81 80 72
                      75634 Paris  cedex 13     Fax.   (33) 01 45 81 31 19