Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by cmm 1111 days ago
Oh boy.

> Guile is also the default extension language for the GNU project.

AFAIK Guix is the only project that uses Guile and has any actual users (I'm not counting Shepherd because outside GuixSD it is nothing). Guile is like 30 years old, and has been envisioned as "the default extension language for the GNU project" all that time (I was an active contributor for a while, so I should know). Guile is not even used by Emacs; Guile extensibility support in GDB is not even commonly built by distros. Guile is a nice and very competent Scheme implementation and I'd love for it to be useful outside Guix, but that's just not the case, and repeating that slogan won't change it. Seriously, just stop.

> It is the old freedom and responsibility problem

No, it is not. Software development is a social and technical field, not a branch of philosophy.
3 comments
lejalv 1111 days ago
> AFAIK Guix is the only project that uses Guile and has any actual users

TeXmacs (https://texmacs.org) uses Guile, Gimp uses a Scheme, and learning Guile for Guix should be transferable with little changes to other Schemes.

link
medo-bear 1111 days ago
Oh boy, you didn't even answer my question about Nix. I guess you can't in a way that doesn't concede to my point - guile is definitely not obscure in the sense that nix is.

For what its worth, here is at least one recent funded project that is using Guile:

https://spritely.institute/goblins/

You also seem to think that I am some kind of Guix/Guile evangelist. No (I actually also prefer CL). I just happen to think that Guix is a better solution than Nix and that it uses a much better language.

> No, it is not. Software development is a social and technical field, not a branch of philosophy.

And I guess you get to say what's good and bad in field? Lol

link
cmm 1111 days ago
> you didn't even answer my question about Nix.

Your question was basically "is this DSL generally useful outside the domain it's been designed for?", so I thought it was rhetorical. That said, the domain of building, configuring and packaging software is not exactly tiny and is only getting bigger as time goes on (which is more bad than good in itself, but beside the point)!

How useful is the DSL implemented by Guix outside Guix itself? What's the comparative mental footprint of that vs. base Guile? Things get interesting when you think them through honestly and avoid stale slogans.

link
medo-bear 1111 days ago
DSL implemented by Guix? Whatever do you mean?

Anyway, most people that I've come across who've used both nix and guix say that the learning curve for the latter is much less. HOWEVER, they usually stayed with nix because it had easier access to non-gnu stuff

link
cmm 1111 days ago
> DSL implemented by Guix? Whatever do you mean?

From what I've seen (which matches my expectations going in), Guix relies on macros heavily enough to be considered a DSL on top of Guile (as opposed to "library" or "framework"). I could be wrong, of course.

link
medo-bear 1111 days ago
Having macros does not equal having a DSL. In fact for me a big benefit of Guix is precisely that it doesn't use a DSL, but uses a well established and maleable language like Guile (Scheme)
link
cmm 1111 days ago
> Having macros does not equal having a DSL.

Any set of non-trivial non-standard macros is a DSL, by definition. You have to know what a macro does and what it is for in order to even understand which of its similar-looking keyword or positional arguments are evaluated and which are not, how they relate to each other, etc, etc. I really don't see what you are arguing about here, or to what end.

link
lagniappe 1111 days ago
regardless of who is right, the fervent opinions and bless-your-hearts in this thread tell me that I'm better off using neither. Purity tests are fucking dumb, escalating goalposts are fucking dumb, worrying about how others compute is fucking dumb. We're all nerds here, there's no need for this level of emotional investment into other people's opinions..
link
umanwizard 1111 days ago
You're absolutely right, but if that makes you not try something you might be missing out. For example, Rust is probably my favorite programming language (definitely my favorite native-code-producing one) even though I find some of the community extremely off-putting.
link