In article <qij2087988i.fsf_-_@lambda.ai.mit.edu>, Olin Shivers
<shivers@lambda.ai.mit.edu> wrote:
> [various good reasons why existing Scheme implementations couldn't do the job]
> I couldn't solve my problem in Scheme. And I am tolerably well acquainted with
> the language and its implementations. I could solve my problem with tcl. The
> server we were running had a tcl interpreter linked in, and the tcl system
> had hooks to an RDBM interface. Took an evening.
>
> As long as this situation persists, the Scheme community can snipe about
> what a lousy, poorly-designed language tcl is, but they aren't in a position
> to offer a credible alternative. So it is just empty flaming. So why post?
> Go fix the problem.
I couldn't agree with Olin more. This was the mindset I had, when I
first posted about Ousterhoust's white paper in the Scheme newgroups
(yes, I started this mess). What I was hoping was that the Scheme
community would read this paper and respond by writing code and utilities
to help compete against tcl and perl. Instead, everyone got defensive,
and started attacking the validity of every idea in that paper.
Yes, I realize Ousterhoust's paper was basically an info-mercial, and
wasn't meant to be a serious study on the use of "system" vs. "scripting"
languages. That's the whole point. Selling the sytem.
What's make tcl/tk and perl good languages is that they are general
purpose hammers. They have interfaces or modules for just about
everything. They get the job done. Period. No amount of arguing about
the syntatic/semantic "purity" of languages will change this.
Although many will not agree with this (and this is just my opinion),
the Guile project is the last/best hope for the Scheme community. It is
the only Scheme implementation that could have a high enough profile
(due to FSF) to gather enough support to add all the necessary extras.
I really hope this happens.
Richard Coleman
coleman@math.gatech.edu
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