Re: Appreciation / Financial support

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 1:04 PM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> Bad input tends to let LilyPond segfault.  You need C++ for that: it
>>> is not possible in Scheme alone.  Take a look at listener.cc, one of
>>> our simplest C++ classes with things like
>>
>> From a user perspective, there is little difference in getting a
>> Scheme level stacktrace or a segmentation fault. (I am assuming he is
>> not doing any scheme hacking). By itself, exchanging core dumps for
>> scheme stack traces is not that valuable.
>
> From a developer perspective, it is.
>
>> While the scheme integration have been a big leap forward in terms of
>> expandability and flexibility, I think it has also been our gravest
>> design error. Both for technical reasons (GUILE is a poor
>> implementation), but also for practical reasons: writing scheme is
>> hard for the general public, and it has surely decreased the amount of
>> developer participation we've had.
>
> Writing C++ code is not possible for the general public since it means
> recompiling matters.  Do you really want to suggest that people would be
> fine with writing C++ for every situation where now Scheme is being
> used?

There are two separate discussions here:

- how do we offer to average user a way to extend the program. I agree
that C++ is not the way to go

- how do we offer developers an environment to extend LilyPond, were
extensions go back into mainline; this is connected with getting more
developers  on LilyPond.

I agree John Q. Public will not want to recompile lilypond.

For long term extensions developers, there just are not that many
lisp/scheme developers.  I say this both as a software engineer at
google (which is full of bright computer scientist, but not so much
list/scheme hackers), and as a casual observer. Compare for example:

http://stackoverflow.com/ : C++ tag 120k questions, Scheme+Lisp: 4k questions

https://github.com/languages : C++ is not the top, but lisp/scheme
don't even register on the graph.

For people that already program, typically compiling lilypond will be
a smaller hurdle than learning scheme.

> The point is that adding new parts to the C++ parts is hard.  Look at
> the stuff people enjoy playing with Scheme engravers, and Scheme
> engravers are an afterthought fitted inside of a C++ engraver only
> so-so.  We have several people suggesting Scheme solutions to problems
> on the LilyPond user list.  Would they suggest C++ solutions?  Wouldn't
> that be more of a problem than a solution?
>
> Scheme might not have been the optimal choice, but it beats not having
> an interpretative layer, and our interpretative layer is still much more
> limited than desirable.

To me the question is where we should invest: having the interpretive
layer be more rich (where it is already incredibly rich *and*
incredibly obtuse), or having better fundamentals (page breaking,
spacing, collisions etc..)

-- 
Han-Wen Nienhuys - address@hidden - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen