On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 10:36:59AM -0500, Marc Feeley wrote:
>
> On Dec 9, 2013, at 4:07 PM, Răzvan Rotaru <razvan.rotaru@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > Congratulations, and a big thank you. This is great news. I remember looking over scheme implementations some time ago, and not being sure whether gambit is actually still alive or not (besides bugfixing). Whether there's a community around it. Whether somebody is till actively working on it and/or supporting it. In the mean time I have learned the answer, and I've also found out that things are moving towards multi-core and multi-platform (speak: javascript). This is great.
> >
> > If I am allowed, I would like to criticize the lack of a "community adopted" module system, which I think can have a big (positive) influence on the community. My oppinion is that newcomers want to get started quickly. And they have stuff to do. They want to tackle the big questions later, and get stuff done now. Rick Hickey did put it very nicely: default matters. I can't but agree.
> > If Black Hole is good enough, I can't but suggest to give it a "pseudo standard" status and include it in the distribution (or recommend it as a standard module system). And make sure it's handling libraries at least at convenient as maven (i.e. auto download and dependency resolution).
> >
> > It is incredibly important to have an easy quickstart, and have libraries at your fingertips, and get stuff quickly done. This is actually the secret recipe of Java (even if they discovered it in the second decade, and the core technology still sucks big time, even now). As much as I hate to wake a sleeping dragon, I must say that gambit has to make more bold moves and decisions and focus on gathering a community around it, if it intends to be practical.
> >
> > Thanks, and don't kill the critique.
> > Razvan
> >
> >
> >
> > I'm not sure if and how I can help. If there are ideas out there, I'm open to suggestions.
>
> Frankly, I think adopting the R7RS module system (subset or
> compatible superset) is inevitable.  It is relatively simple and I
> expect it to be adopted by other Scheme implementations, allowing
> Gambit users to more easily share code with users of other Scheme
> systems.  Also, I know that Alex Shinn is working on a new version of
> the "snow" Scheme code repository that will be based on the R7RS
> module system.

Agree.

The first thing I thought when reading the suggestion that Gambit
should standardize on Blackhole was, Where's the Scheme standard going
with this.  Shouldn't we be tending in that direction?