Re: How to make GNU Guile more successful

[Matt Wette]

Scheme is not for everyone.  But getting more people to use it is going to mean 
people seeing what it offers over other languages.  I do a fair amount of 
Python programming.  Python code is fairly portable: my Mac comes with it 
installed and so I can send code to anyone with a Mac and it will probably run. 
 Python also has a *huge* set of libraries.  Writing extension code (in C) for 
Python sucks, though.  And Python `lambda’ is weak.

And Python does not work well on tasks that Scheme excels at: tree structures, 
little-languages, list processing, etc.  If you want more people to use 
Scheme/Guile you need to write applications that demonstrate it’s strengths 
over other languages.  I know of nothing that beats Scheme macros for building 
your own language extensions: that capability is so awesome.   And Scheme looks 
pretty promising to me for handling XML-based tree structures (e.g., SXML with 
foldts and friends).

Matt