Re: Outreachy contribution & guidance with guile.

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello Aniket,

Aniket Patil <aniket112.patil@gmail.com> skribis:

> I sent patches for gnu/packages/cran.scm. I am planning to add more
> variables to cran.scm file. Meanwhile, I am writing my final outreachy
> application.

Great!

> I am thinking about translating guix or gnu docs in Indian languages,
> which I know.

Translation work is happening via the Translation Project.  See
<https://translationproject.org/domain/guix-manual.html> for the Guix
manual (I think few GNU manuals are available for translations apart
from this one).

Several people on this list are involved in translation, and Arun Isaac
took care of the Tamil translation of the Shepherd, so surely you can
get guidance on this from people here.

> Also, as an emacs user, who is trying to understand lisp to get
> comfortable around emacs, I was a bit confused about whether shall I
> learn lisp first or guile first? What do you suggest?

Guix itself is written in Guile Scheme.  Scheme is a member of the “Lisp
family” of programming languages, and so is Emacs Lisp (the language
used in Emacs).

There are “dialectic” differences, such as different function names, but
also deeper changes, such as a single name space for both “normal”
variables and procedures in Scheme as well as a focus on “functional
programming” in Scheme whereas Emacs Lisp is more biased towards
imperative programming.

I’m very much biased :-), but I think that Scheme is a bit easier to
learn.

If you’re going to write code for Emacs, Emacs Lisp is what you should
learn; if you’re going to write code for Guix, learn Scheme.  Either
way, despite their differences, you’ll find it rather easy to learn one
once you know the other.

Ludo’.