Mail Archives: geda-user/2015/10/06/02:02:50
On Tue, 6 Oct 2015, Dave McGuire (mcguire AT neurotica DOT com) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com] wrote:
> On 10/05/2015 11:34 PM, gedau AT igor2 DOT repo DOT hu wrote:
>>> Well, considering the fact that I use gEDA and PCB nearly every day,
>>> *I* am the user base. And to watch the traffic around here, I'm the
>>> only guy busy actually USING this stuff!
>>
>> I am an user too in that sense. Britton too. We both say scripting is
>> good, so you are losing this by rate 2:1.
>
> Oh hey, no, I never said scripting wasn't good. I like scripting. I
> just don't like people getting their panties in a bunch when it isn't
> done in their favorite language so they insist it be changed to suit them.
CHange to suit them, sure. You are probably aware of the fact that
scripting I did for pcb-rnd supports about 10 scripting languages,
including scheme, a language that I do hate.
>
> It also really annoys me (and this is nobody's problem but mine) when
> people complain about Scheme as being "hard". This is electronic
> design, for chrissakes...it's orders of magnitude harder than Scheme
> could ever be.
I don't complain about scheme being hard. I've written this down many
times already, but you probably missed it so I'll repeat:
1. I complain about the tight coupling between _any one_ scripting
language and geda _core_. It is because I believe scripting makes sense on
a different (higher) level, and core should be more stand-alone and
scirpting language neutral.
2. again point 1, from the other aspect: users should be able to use their
favorite language; it's impossible to support all languages, but at least
trying to provide a few alternatives is better than hardwiring a specific
language. Having to support alternatives also help inventing an API
between scripting and core which can help keeping things clean.
3. I complain about the actual choice, scheme; not because it's hard in
general, but because it's ugly (personal preference!), time wasting
(personal experience), and even according to feedback on the mailing list
is a blocker for many could-be-contributors.
Just because electronics design is hard, and some find scheme hard
too, that doesn't automatically validate scheme as the best choice.
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