scripting language vs. developer community size

[Christopher Browne]

On Mon, 15 Jan 2001 20:09:10 EST, the world broke into rejoicing as
Ariel Rios <ariel@arcavia.com>  said:
> > 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.

> False. Many GNOME applications use Scheme via guile or even
> using SIOD (as the GIMP)

The GNOME apps that use Scheme seem to be a minority; hopefully
they will increasingly become script-controllable, but it's not
vastly clear that this is yet or soon will be the case.

But the more pertinent question is really of whether or not GnuCash uses
Scheme _because of the authority of RMS_.

The answer to that is _NO_.  GnuCash does not use Scheme "because RMS
thought that would be a good idea," but rather because various of the
developers _of GnuCash_ consider it a good idea.

Frankly, it's utterly unimportant if there are thousands of people out
there in "Internet-Land" that think Scheme is a ludicrous choice if, in
contrast, the core developers of GnuCash _all_ happen to like Scheme.
If the latter fact is true [and if not directly true, it's at least not
_vastly distant_ from the truth], then it's likely that Scheme will be
the Most Supported Scripting Language for GnuCash.
--
(concatenate 'string "aa454" "@freenet.carleton.ca")
<http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
"It seems  certain that much of  the success of Unix  follows from the
readability, modifiability, and portability of its software."
-- Dennis M. Ritchie, September, 1979