Re: [Chicken-users] News from the Barnyard

[Joerg F. Wittenberger]

Felix Winkelmann <address@hidden> writes:

> Joerg F. Wittenberger wrote:
> > Felix, you know (while the others here don't) chicken can do this a
> > lot more already.
> 
> Yes, I apologize. Mostly that server I described is more for my personal

Err... I do have to apologize, because you don't have a real reason
to.  I better had not written this sentence at all.  Sorry it was just
your posting which triggered me to post immediately and as a reply.

The license consideration was nothing new here, the decision was.
Your posting reminded me to "release early, release often" hence I let
the incomplete code go, which I would normally have kept secret until
it works.  But this could take quite a while and I hope some people
might at least be happy to use the parts.

> use, and I like simple, easy solutions. Specifically I'm completely
> fed up with GUI libraries and using dynamically generated HTML instead
> (which, to quote Paul Graham, "is not perfect, but it works")
> looks appealing.

;-) Same here.  As a personal tool the Askemos server is nothing else,
just a really tiny bit more versatile than a file system (ACID
semantics of transactions) and it ensures some invariants you need for
documents in legal binding context (forge proof).  Otherwise it's just
self editing XML+Scheme.  I use it for everything like personal notes,
letters, invoices, websites etc.

> And I'd love to help, really. Unfortunately I only understand a
> fraction of what Askemos is supposed to be. I will get the Askemos

Here I do have a feeling, why I observe rscheme travel the tree faster
than chicken.  But I understand only a fraction of what chicken and
rscheme do exactly (i.e., calling conventions, virtual machine) and
that's why my feeling is actually a wild guess.

Anyway: rscheme uses (to my understanding) a register file (vector of
values) for parameters.  If I keep calling functions, which all have
the same signature and only modify a few of the parameters, the
rscheme compiler seems to feed mostly /* NOOP */ to C (except for the
modified parameters) - hardly beatable in runtime.  Chicken seems to
fill yet another stack frame.  Am I right?

Keep in mind: that's a wild guess.  There is also the fact that the
Scheme interpreter in rscheme apparently compiles into byte code,
which the one in Askemos does not.  I have no idea, which one would be
faster.  (Bytecompile effort doesn't really count, the Askemos caches
quite a few things, also calls to 'eval'.)

best regards

/Jörg

-- 
The worst of harm may often result from the best of intentions.