Vijay Marupudi <vijaymarup...@gatech.edu> writes: > I don't think it's fair to say that using packages in Guile just as > easy/hard as other languages. Python / Javascript make this incredibly > easy, and their ecosystem is evidence for that success. Their package > managers have flaws, but they have benefits too, and those benefits > would be great for Guile.
I would just like to tag onto this convo that I agree that its not fair to say that Guile is easy and will quickly bless those who endeavor to learn it with superpowers. My experience w/Racket was very smooth and I got working in it very quickly. I was a contracted to work on a project in Python a few months ago and without ever studying it I was able to start doing production work in it (ridiculous how intuitive it is, really). Before I started learning Guile I read Edwin Brady's book on Idris and found Idris much easier to get from start to end of small projects I was working on (because there is a well written book on it). While Guile has become my favorite programming language, it took me several months to learn how to navigate & figure out how to navigate the SRFIs, how to plan a program so that I can know what to expect along the way (what features I'll need to implement myself, etc) before I was able to get productive in it beyond the realm of Guix. And I think most would agree that Scheme is a less advanced language than Idris (I did some category theory in school so I have some intuition for the ideas, but still). And to be honest, I still hit plenty of road blocks. There were definitely some times where I was digging around trying to figure out how to do things and came across messages in the archives saying "its so easy you just do [vague hand wavy explanation]". And I found that quite frustrating, like there is an insularity meant to weed out the bad apples. And when this topic popped up on the guix list a few weeks ago some others expressed similar concerns, folks who are doing very impressive work. A programming language should never make programmers feel dumb -- it should make us feel empowered! [end rant, thanks for humoring me] -- “In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni”