Re: [r6rs-discuss] Implementors' intentions concerning R6RS

[Julian Graham]

> When I started using Guile, I was fully in sync with the "embeddable
> library" approach, which means that I'd write, say, 75% of an
> application in C, and then arrange to have the remainder written in
> Scheme in an extensible fashion.
>
> But I started really enjoying Scheme and wanting to write less C, more
> Scheme.  So why bother writing C at all when I could avoid it?  Well,
> for "performance reasons".  And what are those "performance reasons"?
> The interpreter is pretty slow, which is definitely not due to inherent
> limitations of the language, but to the implementation.
>
> I'm convinced that it's possible to write a Scheme interpreter much
> faster than ours.  So I think that's one route we should take in 1.9.
> The next step would be to have a compiler (to byte code, to C,
> whatever).  However, I think the interpreter should keep playing a
> central role in Guile (because it always did, and because it's often
> convenient to work with an interpreter), which is why I would consider
> improving/rewriting the interpreter a major goal for 1.9.
>
> Maybe we should start a discussion about what we'd like to see in 1.9?
> :-)


Well, for what it's worth, faster live "interpretation" of Scheme is
really important to me, whether that means some kind of Scheme JIT
compilation a la GNU Lightning or whatever.  I'm still fairly wed to
being able to "script" my C code with Scheme dynamically, so I hope
Guile's not moving away from that significantly.  Other non-specific,
poorly-researched desires for 1.9:

* Faster GC (this is probably pretty similar to "faster interpretation")

* Integrated debugging and profiling tools

* Guile was initially proposed as a multi-language scripting platform;
is that still part of the mission?

* Not related to 1.9 itself, but maybe a cleanup / redesign of the web
page, including a cleanup of active projects, better integration with
Savannah for bug tracking, etc.

* Thorough updating of the documentation

* Integration with Free Software VMs -- Bigloo currently lets you
compile Scheme to CIL; it would be neat if you could do the same with
Guile and then run on top of DotGNU.  Or Kaffe.  Or anything else.