Re: Beginning contributor needs mentor

[David Kastrup]

Simon Albrecht <address@hidden> writes:

> On 10.11.2015 16:36, John Gourlay wrote:
>> I’m a recently retired software engineer highly experienced with
>> C++, less with Unix and open-source development, and not at all with
>> Scheme.
>
> I fear that you may not get around learning some scheme, since our C++
> source is quite interlinked with scheme parts, but I may be
> mistaken. The Guile Reference Manual
> <http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/docs/docs-1.8/guile-ref/> may help.

It's worse than that.  The user-accessible programming layer and related
data structures are Scheme.  So Scheme programming and its data
structures are really what is driving the design of LilyPond: the C++
layers are subordinates.  While there are considerable bouts of
self-reliant C++ code, their ultimate in- and output derives from Scheme
and fits in there, as do many intermediate connections.

So foregoing to learn about Scheme when working on LilyPond in the
expectation that one can solve problems in C++ is likely about as
effective as foregoing to learn about EmacsLisp when working on Emacs.

The principal problem-solving language of LilyPond is Scheme, even
though C++ provides computational shortcuts and some core parts.

-- 
David Kastrup