scripting language vs. developer community size

[Bill Gribble]

On Mon, Jan 15, 2001 at 06:37:59PM +0000, Al Snell wrote:
> > On the other hand, perhaps you folks are using "ability to program
> > Scheme" in the same way Linus is using "ability to debug kernel
> > problems without a kernel debugger", i.e. as an IQ filter to keep
> > dumb people from contributing code.  I respect that strategy,
> > actually, in the case of Linux.  Is that partly the way you folks
> > think about it?
> 
> Note that GnuCash isn't really making the decision. Scheme is the
> scripting language of the GNU project. It integrates with all the GNU
> stuff.

I think this is a little bit disingenuous.  Nobody outside the
gnucash-devel list is requiring gnucash to use Scheme, least of all
RMS; in point of fact, hardly any GNU projects actually use Scheme
anyway, despite several years of drum-beating to get it to happen.

I'm not trying to say that the FSF support of Guile is not a factor in
the decision to use Guile.  However, it's not a primary reason (IMO)
and frankly if "the FSF says we should" was the most important reason
to use Guile as the scripting language I don't think I would support
it.

I'll shout it from a mountaintop: Scheme is a great programming
language, and Guile (while it has its flaws) is a particularly nice
implementation for those who wish to code part or all of their
application in Scheme while remaining free to use any other libraries
you can get your hands on.

I've written big programs in C, C++, Common LISP, and Scheme, and
small programs in lots and lots of languages.  For working on big
programs, right at this time I can't think of any way I'd rather do it
than as a combination of Scheme and C.  Scheme is the kind of language
that brings joy to programming (for me) and C is the universal binding
language, so if you can put them together there's nothing you can't do
more-or-less in style.

Bill Gribble