Re: [Chicken-users] Re: News from the Barnyard

[Felix Winkelmann]

Martin Gasbichler wrote:
> I'm almost sure what you are comparing here is not the speed of the
> servers but the speed of the servers running on top of different
> Scheme implementations. 

That is certainly true. But at the end of the day, it makes no
difference. What is effectively executing is the combination
of both, and that counts.

> Did you consider porting one of the existing
> web servers to chicken? The same applies to your FTP and POP3
> libraries. Both SUnet and PLT come with a huge bunch of networking
> libraries: why is it more attractive to start from scratch instead of
> trying to port existing code and benefit from the work and design
> choices already made?

For several reasons. I don't code in pure R5RS Scheme, it's just
too painful. Furthermore the porting effort appears higher to me
than implementing it from scratch. Also, the design decisions
made by others shouldn't be taken for granted, they might not
fit everyone's needs. The Chicken server (which hasn't even
been released, yet!) is based on a small, relatively easy to
use HTTP library, which is (naturally) highly implementation
dependent. The server itself is quite minimalistic, and doesn't
even try to be a replacement for, say, SUnet. So it's just
a simple wrapper program for the HTTP stuff, which is fine
for specialized needs. And who knows, I might even try to
extend it further, what's the problem with that? I believe
in diversity.

Yes, porting the SUnet server to Chicken might be a good idea,
perhaps I'll do it one of these days. Hey, how about you? ;-)

> > Anyway, it works and is quite easy to use.
>
>
> This certainly applies to the existing servers as well. In addition
> both come with with features like s{e,u}rflets and XML as s-expressions
> that ease web programming very much.

I do not claim that other web-servers are not easy to use, or
insufficient. I'm just advertising a few lines of software I'm written.

See, I don't really understand this whole discussion. There are
numerous SMTP, POP3, FTP, HTTP and whatever libraries out there,
for different implementations. Why is it that a bunch of (unreleased)
libraries for Chicken generates such an uproar? (forgive the slight
exaggeration).

Perhaps I should add that I'm not particularly interested in doing
any service to the "Scheme community" as such. What I need (and what I
would like to make available for others) is completely created for,
and optimized towards, Chicken. Period.


cheers,
felix