[gambit-list] The future of Gambit

Bradley Lucier lucier at math.purdue.edu
Wed Jan 14 10:41:27 EST 2009


On Jan 14, 2009, at 10:27 AM, Marc Feeley wrote:

>> I've studied the Gambit source code a bit, and even made some
>> contributions over the years, but Marc's programming style is
>> something I have not seen elsewhere---highly macroized and layered,
>> there are patterns in the coding techniques but not ones that I've
>> been able to unravel in general.    Perhaps one way to help new
>> developers get into Gambit would be fore Marc to take a subsystem and
>> write down an explanation of how the macros and layers of code for
>> types, exceptions, constructors, functions, ... of that subsystem
>> work.  (Christian Jaeger seems to have had some success in doing
>> this, but it would be good to have an explanation of how Marc sees
>> the construction of subsystems of the runtime.)  Just to get an idea
>> of Marc's programming style would allow others to divine more easily
>> the structure of the code.

Marc:

Thank you for your reply.

I'm thinking something along the lines of Shriram's talk "The Swine  
before Perl", which goes through an example of how to program finite- 
state automata using define-syntax macros.  To object to no  
documentation is not to demand full documentation---I've included one  
of my paragraphs above which explains that it would be nice to see how  
you think of programming.  Pick a subsystem of the runtime or of the  
compiler (the register allocator, beta-reduction, lambda-lifting, one  
of them), explain what the layers are, how and why you do it.  People  
would learn from it (I think I would be a better programmer if I  
understood it).

Brad



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