> From: Thien-Thi Nguyen <t...@gnu.org> > As Guile-SDL maintainer, i wonder what i can do to attract the same > audience, whether or not it is worth expending the energy to do so, in > what ways have i failed to encourage organic additive (as opposed to > parallel) hacking, and how wonderful/terrible it is for GNU to be so > loosely coupled.
Working on a library or framework is always a thankless task, since so few programmers want to use the unproven. Gtk would not be where it is if it weren't for the co-development of Gimp, an end-user program. Getting someone to try an end-user program is easier than getting a programmer to try out a library. But that is difficult as well. Since every essential end-user program has been written -- all new work just re-mixes the old ideas in either shinier or deeper ways -- few people are in "need" of new software. But there is always space for new diversions: there still seems to be a market for something short, easy to run, and entertaining. The Flash or HTML5 games model, essentially. One might consider writing an end-user program first, and then note how it is built upon libraries that can easily be reused. (And speaking of libraries that will never be used... guile-ncurses v1.4 dropped last week. That'll never have any users because the intersection in that Venn diagram is too small, consisting mostly of me. So, I write it for myself. Maybe I should follow my own advice above.) -Mike
