On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 06:24:18PM -0500, Stuart Brorson wrote: > > Why have we so much scheme in gEDA? > > IMO, if there is a problem with scripting in gEDA, the problem is that > the guile developers (and not the Scheme language) have created > problems for us repeatedly. Specifically, they have moved the API > many times, breaking gEDA every time they spin a new guile release. > Also, they have embedded all kinds of libraries into their > implementation which become required dependencies, leading to > dependency hell for folks who want to build gEDA from source.
Dependency growth and seem to be an unavoidable fact of life with all scripting language and a consequence of immoderate featuritis. Look at the number of libraries that are loaded when starting a Python interpreter (and how it has exploded from a really old version like 1.5). In this respect, Scheme seems tremendously lightweight (for the time being). > IMO, the solution to the guile problem is to simply take control and > use our own interpreter, maybe including the TinyScheme source into > libgeda, or something like that. However, I understand that others > don't want the discussion to go in that direction, so I'll leave my > point at that. > > So why don't people like Scheme? Here's my opinion: > > 1. There are lots of folks who whine about learning another > language. "I already know TCL, so why should I learn Scheme?" As > John Doty says, this attitude stinks. It implies that the person with > this attitude doesn't want to learn, which is a terrible attitude for > a practicing engineer. I ignore those people since they whine about > gEDA, but don't actually contribute code. >From my experience, I have soemetimes had to modify a few lines of Scheme (nothing serious) and I found it way easier than modifying any other scripting language that I did not know... (Ok, I did some list 25 years ago, but it's long forgotten). > 3. Some people are confused by Scheme's many parentheses. It is true > that poorly indented Scheme code can be hard to read, but the same is > true of obfuscated Perl, or any poorly structured program. And FWIW, > the netlists implemented by Scheme back-ends in gnetlist are generally > well written and easy to understand. Is there really a difference between obfuscated Perl and line noise? :-) Gabriel _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user