I don't know why Racket is successful probably because
it has a very good documentation and also a documentation
generator written in scheme.
=> This is a long debate and core principle of GNU project
so I don't want to enter that debate
And it's easy to packages.
=> Another pain topic. In reality it's very easy to package
all sort of guile programs for guix. But guix itself needs
to be more stable.
Python is successful because it has a massive number
of libraries. In particular it has dozens of:
- web framework
- library to generate diagrams and graphical stuff
- scientific libraries (machine learning and others)
- books which teach python (the good enough way)
- 2D and 3D libraries for games
=> We (all the people reading this mail) can not just
create all those projects. It requires to many domain
knowledge for a handful of people to be able to compete.
But what we can do is *share*, *share* and *share*
again *all* what we do (on mailing list, blogs, on gitlab
or whatever) whether it is a full blown project with a
website made by a professional designer with tests suite,
a tutorial documentation reference doc and a community or
a simple *snippet* or broken experiments. I have lost
(read deleteted) at least the code of 5 or 6 experiments
only to recognize later that it could be useful for future
me.
=> In terms of software I really think, we need something like
ActiveState Python Cookbook [0]. I still go there sometime even
I could simply ask the question on StackOverflow and get an
answer in minutes.
[0] http://code.activestate.com/recipes/langs/python/
During a long time I was said that Pythonist were
among the smartest developer, because simply they had
the guts to learn a language that was not learned in
school.
=> this can be true for schemers;
Python *was* easy to learn.
=> Scheme is easy to learn if you stick in the "garden"
(garden must be defined but it's basically what I
introduce in my tutorial [1]) Which is totally the
same for the Python of today (read Python 3.5+).
[1] http://hyperdev.fr
PHP was successful back in the days because it was easy
to install,
=> A scheme web application is much easier to run!
Now PHP is successful because there is a few successful
software written in it. By successful I mean they GTD.
They aren't perfect, you get bitten etc. But the basic
are there. I think about Drupal, Wordpress and Prestashop.
=> While you might not be interested to build something
like prestashop. You very much be interested to build
something like Drupal or Wordpress to allow mom and
dad and others create a personnal experience on the
web.
Another thing, Python has GNU Media Goblin
=> We must do better!
WDYT?
What block you from contributing to the wide ecosystem of GNU Guile?
Best regards,
Amirouche
