Fwd: Re: scripting language vs. developer community size

[rob@myinternetplace.net]

I are stoopid.  James, my apologies for the duplicate email.

rob


----- Forwarded message from rob@myinternetplace.net -----
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 18:27:21 -0700 (MST)
From: rob@myinternetplace.net
Reply-To: rob@myinternetplace.net
Subject: Re: scripting language vs. developer community size
To: James LewisMoss <jimdres@mindspring.com>

Quoting James LewisMoss <jimdres@mindspring.com>:

> 1) No on is willing to maintain an interface but the scheme one.  You
>    want a perl interface.  Go ahead.

> 2) Many (most? all?) of the core programmers on gnucash know and like
>    scheme.


> So whatever "You should do this" arguments you might have are pretty
> useless unless you or someone else is willing to maintain another
> scripting interface to gnucash.  I don't think anyone has argued
> against one.  It's just that no one is willing/able/have time/etc.

Jim,

I agree with what you are saying.  I will explicitly say that I agree with the
following points:

1.  the core programmers know and like scheme
2.  because of this (?), the core programmers don't believe that there is a need
to maintain another scripting interface to gnucash.


I wonder if the core programmers have ever realized that the choice to stick
with scheme effectively limits their programmer base to other scheme users, a
smaller base than they could have otherwise.  (Actually, since I think that the
core programmers are very smart people, I also think that they do know this.)

I personally think that a wise question to ask is, "Even though we (the core
programmers) are all familiar with scheme, and we all think that it is the best
solution that exists for us to do this work in, is the amount of work we spend
working in scheme better spent on maintaining a different interface, since we
can accept the work of many others if we do a different interface."

I guess it comes down to efficiencies.  Imagine I am a big business man, and I
have an administrative assistant.  I can type at 80 wpm, and he can only type at
30.  Should I type my own docs?  Probably not, if I am getting paid 4 times what
he is getting paid.

That wasn't such a good analogy.  Let me try this again.  I am saying that these
core guys are so good at what they do that they should work at making it so us
not as good people can contribute by using their time to make it easier for more
people to contribute to the project.  Maybe leverage is what I am talking about,
I am not sure.

I know that I will never touch it as long as the language is scheme.  The fact
that the language is in scheme relegates me completely to the position of
bug-filer and user.  I will not even try to use M-x perldb RET on it, since I
don't think I could.  :-)

Rob (I used to post here as rob@valinux.com, by way of introduction)




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