Le dim. 3 févr. 2019 à 22:36, Mikael Djurfeldt <mik...@djurfeldt.com> a écrit :
> It was a great experience and joy for me to meet some of you at FOSDEM > 2019. Thank you all! > > Now a piece of advice. > > Everyone who works with Guile knows that it's crap and look with envy at > projects like Chez and Racket, right? Jim Blandy thinks that GNU should use > Python as its scripting language. Chris Webber (probably rightly) thinks > "look how much you can accomplish with Racket so quickly". > > I've been there also. I have to confess that I have now and again regarded > Guile as crap since perhaps 1995 and there has been multiple occasions > where I have thought that basing the community effort on some other scheme > would make much more sense, and I have also always looked with envy on Chez > and mzscheme/Racket. > > Yet, it is *amazing* to me how much progress Guile has made since I left. > I, for example, *love* the new language and compiler infrastructure. > > But note now that Racket looks with envy on Chez and intends to base > Racket on Chez while Andy Wingo thinks that he can beat Chez performance. > > My advice is this: > > Idiots go around thinking that their own code is the best thing around. > Sensible people have a natural, and actually productive, tendency to be > critical about their own work. That is all good, unless it hurts the sense > of meaning and joy in your work. > > Remember now first that we are all irrational creatures. We maybe *think* > sometimes that we are rational, because what we think looks rational in our > view. The problem is that the view is usually very limited, with, for > example, a limited set of presumptions. > > For example: Guile is a piece of software, right? Wrong! It is a plant, > growing over time. Now, if we look over the fence into the other garden, > the plants there look much greener. But what will determine the ultimate > fate is not only the shape of it in the present moment, but also the genes > it carries, the quality of the soil, the amount of sunlight and the skills > of its gard[i]ners. We could have quit before we got GOOPS, or before we > got the native threading, or before the compiler tower, without which there > would be no chance to beat Chez. > > If you look at one combination of some Guile features: > > * easy embedding in applications > * support for multiple languages > * the compiler tower > * OO system with polymorphic dispatch and metaobject protocol > * nice, friendly and open community > > I think it is pretty strong and impressive, and I wouldn't like to live > without it. It's especially important to look at Guile as a good breeding > ground for new amazing work. > > That said, we should steal and collaborate all we can! > > All the best, > Mikael > Very well said. I am waiting an official announcement of the ROADMAP for GNU Guile 3 before giving my point of view.
