[gambit-list] Truck-Factor by mtov

Bradley Lucier lucier at math.purdue.edu
Thu Jul 23 14:05:53 EDT 2015


On 07/23/2015 10:52 AM, Marc Feeley wrote:

> Here are some ideas off the top of my head:
>
> - documenting all Gambit features
> - writing unit tests for all those features
> - maintaining Gambit packages for all linux distributions
> - writing tutorials and use cases


Marc, I once had a summer job at the National Research Council on 
Montreal Road outside of Ottawa, where my supervisor told me to find 
something interesting to do; if I couldn't find something to do, then 
the default job was to flowchart his main application program.

Which I thought would be *boring*.

Those things you list are useful, but they sound *boring*, and they 
won't increase the truck factor at all.

In 1998 you proposed to me to rewrite the Gambit bignum code; to me, 
that wasn't boring, and I'm still thinking about it today.  (Hell, I 
even used some new algorithms picked up from some research papers.)

Once Gambit has a module system of some kind, then people can begin to 
contribute the kind of libraries that Chicken and Racket have in spades.

Will the R7RS module system be sufficient for this purpose?

Making Gambit R7RS compliant would help things.  Whoever does it will 
have to learn something of Gambit's internals, I'm sure it's interesting 
to *someone*, and it would increase the truck factor by at least a fraction.

There must be other projects that:

1.  Require someone to learn something about Gambit's internals.
2.  Have a specific goal to work towards.
3.  Increases the truck factor.
4.  Is interesting!

For example, if someone said "I have a big project about such-and-such 
and if Gambit only did <whatever> better" then, depending on what 
<whatever> is, it might be another good way for someone to get into 
Gambit internals and contribute something.

Brad



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