Re: Guile outside of Emacs + Geiser

[Christine Lemmer-Webber]

Good points in your email, Simon!  I'm used to REPLs being integrated
with editors, but if the rest of the world isn't, maybe giving them an
external REPL which feels good is already a step forward.

I thought I heard someone was working on an improved external REPL for
Guile but now I can't remember where I heard that...

 - Christine


Simon Tournier <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Christine,
>
> On Wed, 27 Sep 2023 at 15:07, Christine Lemmer-Webber 
> <cwebber@dustycloud.org> wrote:
>
>> Has anyone had a "good" experience programming with Guile without using
>> Emacs?  If so, what was your development experience like?
>
> At work, I collaborate with people using different setup and different
> programming languages.  And it can be tedious or time-consuming to
> manage all that, for each; context switching, etc.  Therefore, most of
> the times, we ends with: an editor (whatever which one) and a terminal
> running some “REPL“.
>
> For sure, it is better if $editor and $repl are able to communicate back
> and forth.  However, most of the time, the pleasant experience comes
> first from the $repl capacities.
>
> Emacs + Geiser is often a way to have better $repl capacities than what
> Guile offers by default.
>
> For example, IPython, GHCi, R, Julia, etc. provides all a better
> experience by default: completion, quick access to documentation, etc.
>
> For what it is worth – not much! :-), let trivially compare below, in
> order to get a feeling about one basic capacities.
>
> Well, I think the “poor” experience programming with Guile without using
> Emacs mainly comes from the lack of Guile REPL features by default.
>
> My 2 cents. :-)
>
> Cheers,
> simon
>
> $ guix shell --pure guile -- guile -q
> GNU Guile 3.0.9
> Copyright (C) 1995-2023 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>
> Guile comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `,show w'.
> This program is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
> under certain conditions; type `,show c' for details.
>
> Enter `,help' for help.
> scheme@(guile-user)> ,help map
> Unknown command or group: map
> scheme@(guile-user)> ,apropos map
> (guile): map  #<procedure map (f l) | (f l1 l2) | (f l1 . rest)>
> (guile): hash-map->list       #<procedure hash-map->list (_ _)>
> (guile): char-set-map #<procedure char-set-map (_ _)>
> (guile): array-map-in-order!  #<procedure array-map-in-order! (_ _ . _)>
> (guile): array-map!   #<procedure array-map! (_ _ . _)>
> (guile): module-map   #<procedure module-map (proc module)>
> (guile): or-map       #<procedure or-map (f lst)>
> (guile): array-index-map!     #<procedure array-index-map! (_ _)>
> (guile): and-map      #<procedure and-map (f lst)>
> (guile): string-map   #<procedure string-map (_ _ #:optional _ _)>
> (guile): map-in-order #<procedure map (f l) | (f l1 l2) | (f l1 . rest)>
> (guile): string-map!  #<procedure string-map! (_ _ #:optional _ _)>
> (ice-9 threads): n-for-each-par-map   #<procedure n-for-each-par-map (n 
> s-proc p-proc . arglists)>
> (ice-9 threads): par-map      #<procedure 7f8076c96180 at 
> ice-9/threads.scm:283:2 (proc . lists)>
> (ice-9 threads): n-par-map    #<procedure n-par-map (n proc . arglists)>
> scheme@(guile-user)> ,describe map
> #f
>
> $ guix shell --pure python python-ipython -- ipython 
> Python 3.10.7 (main, Jan  1 1970, 00:00:01) [GCC 11.3.0]
> Type 'copyright', 'credits' or 'license' for more information
> IPython 8.5.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python. Type '?' for help.
>
> In [1]: ?map
> Init signature: map(self, /, *args, **kwargs)
> Docstring:     
> map(func, *iterables) --> map object
>
> Make an iterator that computes the function using arguments from
> each of the iterables.  Stops when the shortest iterable is exhausted.
> Type:           type
> Subclasses:     
>
> $ guix shell --pure ghc gcc-toolchain -- ghci
> GHCi, version 9.2.5: https://www.haskell.org/ghc/  :? for help
> ghci> :? map
>  Commands available from the prompt:
>
> [...]
>
>    :doc <name>                 display docs for the given name (experimental)
>
> [...]
>
>    :showi language             show language flags for interactive evaluation
>
>  The User's Guide has more information. An online copy can be found here:
>
>    https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/latest/docs/html/users_guide/ghci.html
>
> ghci> :doc map
> map :: (a -> b) -> [a] -> [b]         -- Identifier defined in `GHC.Base'
>  \(\mathcal{O}(n)\). 'map' @f xs@ is the list obtained by applying @f@ to
>  each element of @xs@, i.e.,
>
>  > map f [x1, x2, ..., xn] == [f x1, f x2, ..., f xn]
>  > map f [x1, x2, ...] == [f x1, f x2, ...]
>
>  >>> map (+1) [1, 2, 3]
>  [2,3,4]
>
> $ guix shell --pure r-minimal coreutils -- R 
>
> R version 4.3.1 (2023-06-16) -- "Beagle Scouts"
> Copyright (C) 2023 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
> Platform: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu (64-bit)
>
> R is free software and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
> You are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
> Type 'license()' or 'licence()' for distribution details.
>
> R is a collaborative project with many contributors.
> Type 'contributors()' for more information and
> 'citation()' on how to cite R or R packages in publications.
>
> Type 'demo()' for some demos, 'help()' for on-line help, or
> 'help.start()' for an HTML browser interface to help.
> Type 'q()' to quit R.
>
>> help(map)
> No documentation for 'map' in specified packages and libraries:
> you could try '??map'
>> ??map
> Help files with alias or concept or title matching 'map' using regular
> expression matching:
>
> base::Filter            Common Higher-Order Functions in Functional
>                         Programming Languages
>   Aliases: Map
> base::mapply            Apply a Function to Multiple List or Vector
>                         Arguments
>
> [...]
>
> Type '?PKG::FOO' to inspect entries 'PKG::FOO', or 'TYPE?PKG::FOO' for
> entries like 'PKG::FOO-TYPE'.
>
> $ guix shell --pure julia -- julia
> WARNING: failed to select UTF-8 encoding, using ASCII
>                _
>    _       _ _(_)_     |  Documentation: https://docs.julialang.org
>   (_)     | (_) (_)    |
>    _ _   _| |_  __ _   |  Type "?" for help, "]?" for Pkg help.
>   | | | | | | |/ _` |  |
>   | | |_| | | | (_| |  |  Version 1.8.3 (2022-11-14)
>  _/ |\__'_|_|_|\__'_|  |  
> |__/                   |
>
> julia> ?
> help?> map
> search: map map! mapfoldr mapfoldl mapslices mapreduce asyncmap asyncmap! 
> macroexpand @macroexpand @macroexpand1 @atomicswap promote_shape ismutabletype
>
>   map(f, c...) -> collection
>
>   Transform collection c by applying f to each element. For multiple 
> collection arguments, apply f elementwise, and stop when when any of them is 
> exhausted.
>
>   See also map!, foreach, mapreduce, mapslices, zip, Iterators.map.
>
>   Examples
>   ≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡
>
>   julia> map(x -> x * 2, [1, 2, 3])
>   3-element Vector{Int64}:
>    2
>    4
>    6
>   
>   julia> map(+, [1, 2, 3], [10, 20, 30, 400, 5000])
>   3-element Vector{Int64}:
>    11
>    22
>    33
>
>   ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
>
>   map(f, A::AbstractArray...) -> N-array
>
>   When acting on multi-dimensional arrays of the same ndims, they must all 
> have the same axes, and the answer will too.
>
>   See also broadcast, which allows mismatched sizes.
>
>   Examples
>   ≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡
>
>   julia> map(//, [1 2; 3 4], [4 3; 2 1])
>   2×2 Matrix{Rational{Int64}}:
>    1//4  2//3
>    3//2  4//1
>   
>   julia> map(+, [1 2; 3 4], zeros(2,1))
>   ERROR: DimensionMismatch
>   
>   julia> map(+, [1 2; 3 4], [1,10,100,1000], zeros(3,1))  # iterates until 
> 3rd is exhausted
>   3-element Vector{Float64}:
>      2.0
>     13.0
>    102.0