Re: gEDA-user: Switch gschem to another scripting language?

[Gabriel Paubert <paubert@xxxxxxx>]

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


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