Re: [Chicken-meisters] Re: Fw: Chicken and marketing

[Mario Domenech Goulart]

Hi Felix and chicken meisters!

On Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:34:49 +0100 (CET) Felix <address@hidden> wrote:

>> I attribute the popularity problem to several reasons, but one of the
>> strongest is that it is a Lisp.  No matter how good a Lisp
>> implementation is, it is always a Lisp, so it is unpopular and subject
>> to trolling.
>
> That is certainly true, but what I think is that chicken is less
> popular among the Lisps as it should.

I'm not sure.  I've always seen Chicken be treated as a very respectful
implementation (it is quite possible that I'm not reading enough).
Maybe it deserve to be more cited.


>> Yes, that's a fact.  In 2011 we had 30-40 users hanging on #chicken.
>> Nowadays we have 40-50 (+ vandusen).  We have some new folks on the
>> mailing list too. I think the number of Chicken users is growing -- and
>> I think the growth is not linear in time!
>
> Wow. Perhaps things aren't as bad as I think?

I'm very optimistic regarding to the visibility Chicken has been
obtaining.  We are constantly improving what we have to offer (code,
documentation and support).  He have a fairly nice infrastructure
nowadays and an increasing number of developers.

#chicken is most populated Scheme implementation IRC channel (it has
even more users than Racket's).  Our mailing lists are quite active
compared to other implementations.

Right now there are 56 users on #chicken.  169 on #scheme. It is
something in the scheme world. :-)


>> Chicken is not used in universities.  It is only used by hackers who
>> have no prejudice against Lisp.
>
> Actually, chicken is used in at least one university course in
> Brazil.

Cool. The university where Jeronimo Pellegrini works, by any chance?

The university where I once attended a course is now teaching Scheme,
but using PLT (or Racket), as far as I know.


>> Chicken is... an excellent Scheme implementation. But for what?
>> Teaching?  Implementing itself? It's better for everything, so is Lisp,
>> but nobody sees that.
>> 
>> I think we are slowly attracting some good new developers and I really
>> think we are getting more and more respectful as a project.  We indeed
>> could advertise Chicken more and we seriously need USERS (not only
>> developers) using APPLICATIONS developed in Chicken.
>
> Right. As I said above, advertising it is not necessary, and it wastes
> too much time and is no fun. Making it attractive is the important
> thing.

Now I finally clearly understand what you mean.  And, yes, I agree.


> I find "Chicken" funny, but not particular attractive. On the
> other hand, since most (all?) people on this list consider the name
> suitable, it is settled anyway. And that's fine.

I agree.  OTOH, finding an attractive name is difficult and "attractive"
can be very subjective.  Not to mention the horror we would face to
actually change the name. :-)


Best wishes.
Mario
-- 
http://parenteses.org/mario