Re: Around again, and docs lead role

[Robert Uhl]

address@hidden writes:
>
> > Well, most of them seem to either be print books (which cost dough),
> > or written specifically for some incompatible dialect.
> 
> ??? "Teach yourself Scheme in fixnum day" is free and takes greate
> care *not* to be dialect specific.  SICP is available online as well
> ...

But that introduces the _language_, not the _implementation_.  Most
users don't care about the language, but rather about how to solve their
problems.  Or at least that's what I think.  What's really needed is an
`introduction to problem solving with guile,' which teaches Scheme
(necessarily) and guile's extensions thereto (necessarily), and doesn't
particularly distinguish--because, I feel, most users don't really care.

> I don't know.  Somehow i have the feeling that a Scheme based
> scripting language will never be as popular as Perl or Python etc.

Probably not.  But not necessarily.  After all, elisp has done pretty
well, driven by the killer app emacs; if more and more apps use guile as
an extension language, then people will become accustomed to extending
apps in Scheme, and we'll all reap the benefits.

OTOH, were Python a little more advanced (i.e. an exact analogue of
Scheme, incl. macros and all) and a _lot_ faster, I'd probably be
tempted to go with it despite its warts.

-- 
Robert Uhl <address@hidden>
Cristo Resucitado!  En Verdad Resucitado!