One reason manpower is short...
One reason manpower is short...
Posted Aug 11, 2003 22:43 UTC (Mon) by dank (guest, #1865)Parent article: State of the GnuCash project
... GnuCash is written partly in Scheme. Need I say more?
Scheme is a fine language, but it's not mainstream, and
choosing Scheme artificially restricted the pool of
available programmers. The GnuCash crew has in the past
denied that choosing Scheme would cause any trouble,
but I'm not sure they can deny that now.
Posted Aug 11, 2003 23:49 UTC (Mon)
by roskegg (subscriber, #105)
[Link] (5 responses)
I am suprised they hang on irc.gnome.net instead of irc.gnu.org. That might help a bit.
Posted Aug 12, 2003 1:39 UTC (Tue)
by dank (guest, #1865)
[Link]
I wrote a little plugin once for Gimp in Scheme. It was a major pain in
Posted Aug 12, 2003 5:56 UTC (Tue)
by rganesan (guest, #1182)
[Link] (3 responses)
I like Lisp and it's variants, I've even tried my hand at some Emacs Lisp
Posted Aug 12, 2003 12:02 UTC (Tue)
by Per_Bothner (subscriber, #7375)
[Link] (2 responses)
It is also strange how Perl/Python are viewed as "mainstream" but Now there are styles of Scheme programming with heavy use
Posted Aug 13, 2003 5:29 UTC (Wed)
by rganesan (guest, #1182)
[Link] (1 responses)
I didn't say I had problems with Scheme. I had taken a Lisp > It is also strange how Perl/Python are viewed as "mainstream" but I am fairly confident that's a view shared by a large number of developers. I am a professional software developer and in the three companies that I've worked in over the last 10 years, Perl is certainly more "mainstream" than Scheme. In other words, I haven't come across any scheme programmers among my colleagues. I can't say the same for Python though. Hardly anybody seems to be aware of Python at the companies I've worked, but it definitely has more traction than scheme.
Posted Aug 26, 2003 15:46 UTC (Tue)
by Dareth (guest, #14475)
[Link]
Pascal,C,Java, hell even Perl. Lisp just doesn't fit the normal mold. Look at the basic Welcome or Hello World .scm file. I can follow what it is doing, but I wouldn't want to just make The comments are helpful.. but some heavy tutorials will be needed to get coders past the initial "WTF kind of code is this!" reaction.
No. Scheme was the right choice. They are following in the footsteps of the GIMP and other fine applications by embedding Guile. They just need to document the Scheme API a bit better. You want to write a report? It's easy, just whip up a scheme function; it eliminates the need for complex module loading code; the Scheme VM does the code loading for you.One reason manpower is short...
... and Gimp is backpedalling furiously from that decision;One reason manpower is short...
they now allow plugins in C, Perl, and Python as well as
the original Scheme. Looking at the
registry of available plugins at http://registry.gimp.org,
it seems clear that a lot of plugins are being written in
Perl and C.
the ass, and I'm a fairly good programmer. The documentation sucked,
and Scheme was a bit of a nightmare to learn on the fly. I'm
sure if I had already known Scheme, it would have been a lot
easier. But next time I do it, I sure as heck won't use the Scheme
interface.
I respectfully disagree. Note that I am not disparaging scheme in any way. One reason manpower is short...
I am also not denying that Scheme may be a good choice for Gnucash. I use GnuCash every day despite having some issues with it's UI and performance, so the choice can't be all that bad ;-). However, I agree that Scheme *is* the main reason for lack for developers. It's simply not a mainstream language.
programming. However I never got around to doing serious programming
in Lisp or Scheme. On the other hand I have written decent sized programs
in C/C++/Java/Perl/Python. I have contributed to a few open source projects. I even have a patch for gnucash for supporting Indian mutual funds - but that's a patch for C code in gnucash. You may not like my attitude, but hey, that's the reality. I am sure a lot of developers share this view.
It is weird how someone who has written "decent sized programsOne reason manpower is short...
in C/C++/Java/Perl/Python" should have problems with Scheme.
I don't understand this - Scheme is a very simple language
- much simpler than Perl, certainly.
Scheme is not, even though Scheme is much more mainstream
when it comes to the history and development of
programming languages.
of nested lambdas that may be harder to understand for most people
(including myself), but I assume GnuCash doesn't do that.
> It is weird how someone who has written "decent sized programsOne reason manpower is short...
> in C/C++/Java/Perl/Python" should have problems with Scheme.
> I don't understand this - Scheme is a very simple language
> - much simpler than Perl, certainly.
Programming course for my under graduate degree and have done some
simple Emacs Lisp programming. I never did any serious programming
with Lisp/Scheme in my professional career though.
> Scheme is not, even though Scheme is much more mainstream
> when it comes to the history and development of
> programming languages.
Syntax is syntax for most languages...LISP style not readable
Most programmers can sit down and read code examples and pick up
the syntax of the language. Some quick testing, writing examples,
modifying code and you got the basic idea.
arbitrary changes to see what if. To many "gotchas" especially with the nesting of the braces.