Re: What is Guile?

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

address@hidden writes:
> [..interesting stuff elided..]

> For my part, shortly after Java was released, I demonstrated a C-like
> syntax for Guile.   I think that, quite bitrotted now, that code is
> still floating around.
> 
> Sure, a multi-lingual framework can, in some sense, use the set-union
> of all of those libraries.  On the other hand, the "styles" of various
> languages are sufficiently different that such library sharing is of
> distinctly limited utility.  A good Python library is not necessarily
> a good Scheme library or a good Java library or a good Tcl library.
> You can glue the libraries together in a pinch -- but to make a
> programming environment that is comprehensive yet compact and clean,
> you're probably better off sticking to just one programming language.
> 
> Nowadays, I don't think people care too much if you happen to be able
> to program Guile in Python.  (Evidence for this can be seen in the
> Real Soon Now translator for Python->Guile.)  Perhaps if
> Python-in-Guile offered significantly better performance or profoundly

It is interesting to note that Java is much more the "multi-lingual
framework", considering Kawa (Scheme in Java), Jython (Python in Java)
and host of other projects. (A colleague of mine had this neat
mini-Haskell-in-Java project.)  Apparently, the way to build such a
framework is by providing portable low-level byte-code operations,
glued to an extensive library.


-- 

Han-Wen Nienhuys   |   address@hidden   |   http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen