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by BeetleB 1109 days ago
> Moreover by learning Guile you learn a lisp which some people find quite enlightening. What do you gain from learning Nix, asside from Nix?

This thread is baffling. cmm is asking a fairly simple question. He's not trying to make a point. If people don't have the answer, they need not respond! There are so many responses to him - none answering his question.
1 comments
medo-bear 1109 days ago
lol everyone seems to be baffled in this thread. i am just adressing his claim that guile and nix are equally obscure. which to me is just plain silly
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BeetleB 1109 days ago
If you're into Lisp/Scheme, it sounds silly.

If you're part of the 99% who know little of Lisp languages, he is correct. There's not much of a difference between 0.001% and 0.01%, when you're working in numbers like 20+%.

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cmm 1109 days ago
And even more than that: I think Guile specifically would long have been abandoned and forgotten about if not for Guix.
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davexunit 1109 days ago
While Guix is the Guileverse's biggest and most successful project, a lot of the compiler/VM work that happens in Guile happens pretty independently because Andy Wingo just likes to hack on Guile. Guile would still be here, but the community would be smaller.
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medo-bear 1109 days ago
what are these numbers? i think any person with a cs education would at least recognise lisp syntax
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BeetleB 1109 days ago
> i think any person with a cs education would at least recognise lisp syntax

The discussion wasn't on Lisp, but Guile. They may recognize Lisp syntax, but the majority will not have heard of Guile (let alone Scheme).

And you are referring to recognizing Lisp syntax, which is not what I was referring to when I said "know little of Lisp languages". Sure - most know it exists and has a lot of parentheses.

BTW, many if not most programmers don't have a CS education. And many who do don't encounter Lisp in their curriculum. I just checked my undergrad's required courses - the PL course has Java, SML, Prolog and Python - no Lisp. Anecdotally, in all the teams I've worked in for my career, there was only one team where people had an idea of Lisp. In the other teams, they didn't even know that it's the language with a lot of parentheses (as in they'd look at Lisp code and have no idea which language it was).

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medo-bear 1109 days ago
it would make more sense to write "majority will not have heard of Scheme (let alone Guile)"

still who knows Nix?

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BeetleB 1108 days ago
Does it matter?
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