Re: the future of Guile

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

"Bill Schottstaedt" <address@hidden> writes:

> There are several reasons to have different base and extension
> languages.  The worst is that Guile/Scheme is 10 to 30 times
> slower than the equivalent C code, and in DSP work, that matters.

Of course it matters, but another solution would be to have a faster
Scheme implementation.

> Another is that everyone has his favorite language, and
> by separating the basic stuff out, you can provide any number
> of extension language choices at reasonably small cost (Snd
> can be built with Guile, Gauche, Forth, Ruby, or no extension
> language).

Right, but few applications really do this, probably because it's hard
to provide good integration and good maintenance of all these.

Actually, I'm not arguing against "embeddability", rather stating
that it should not serve as an excuse for not going beyond the mere
"language for extension" approach.  Among Schemers, many care about
writing applications in Scheme, rather than in C.  That people develop
Guile bindings for existing C libraries is an illustration.

Thanks,
Ludovic.