Re: What's after guile-1.4? (was: Re: Questions... I am new to scheme)

[Greg Harvey <Greg.Harvey@thezone.net>]

Jay Glascoe <jglascoe@jay.giss.nasa.gov> writes:

> On 11 Dec 1998, Greg Harvey wrote:
> 
> > Greg Harvey <Greg.Harvey@thezone.net> writes:
> > 
> > > <rant> 
> > > 
> > > It isn't a mindset that I can really understand: among useful
> > 
> > Oops, should've been can't.
> 
> I don't think this applies.  If you want a small cool language, try Lua.
> If you want a small general purpose programming language... well, rNrs
> Scheme is about as small as they come (of course you'd go nuts writing all
> the "little things" needed for everyday programming.  silly, you'd wind
> up with something like Guile anyway  ;)
> 

<more ranting ;)>
True, but what I was raving (emphesis on raving ;) about is the
attitude that someone would use a big language (or a language with a
large number of libraries, like c), but yet find the size of guile (or
cl) too big. I don't think that, for the most part, anyone really
wants a ``small'' language, just the appearance of small. If guile
itself looks like a small, r5rs scheme interpreter, nobody would even
mention it, but most every program would start with a bunch of
(use-module lotsa-added-stuff) ;) Certainly, there are places where
you do want small (it would defeat the purpose of trying to get a
student to write a function to sort a list, if they just do (sort
list) :), but ``really small'' just means a lot of reinventing,
and the bugs that go with it. 

</more ranting>

Anyhow, it's definately not, like, consequential and stuff. The
direction of guile has been chosen, and as long as it doesn't make
life too annoying for kitchen sink types (like me ;), I'll be quite
happy. 

> JimB: how about "Cindy Crawford will be all over you if you use guile 
>                  and drink GNU beer?" ;)

Hey, I wrote that! :)

-- 
Greg, it's probably not the best way to stick little bits in my sig,
      tho ;)