Re: [Chicken-users] Re: Debian slander?

[Alex Shinn]

On Dec 23, 2007 5:34 PM, John Cowan <address@hidden> wrote:
> felix winkelmann scripsit:
>
> > > Chicken's interpreter is not
> > > strongly performant, but does provide strong debugging facilities.
> >
> > I'd remove that last sentence above.
>
> I think it's true: if you want a fast interpreter, you wouldn't use csi,
> would you?  No use implying that Chicken is something it isn't.

It's misleading because it's beside the point.
When you need speed, you use the compiler.
When you don't need speed, any interpreter will
do, and the fact that csi is on the slow end of
something that is already slow doesn't mean much.

The cases where EVAL speed really matter are
quite rare so it's confusing to mention them in
such a short description.  Most newcomers will
be used to either entirely compiled or entirely
interpreted languages, and if you say that Chicken's
EVAL is slow they'll likely assume the language
as a whole is slow.

I also have issues with the second part of that
sentence - I would not consider csi's debugging
facilities strong compared to other Scheme
implementations (it's about average, and I think
we need to raise the bar on Scheme debuggers
in general).

-- 
Alex