4 ms·

I almost posted this an hour ago, and feel more comfy now that it’s an hour later: I’m sad how quickly this rocketed to top 3 on front page and how little cont

I almost posted this an hour ago, and feel more comfy now that it’s an hour later: I’m sad how quickly this rocketed to top 3 on front page and how little content there is, it’s just someone resigning from a project virtually none of us know about. The “My resignation letter” was titillating enough to skyrocket upvotes and engagement

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
chriswarbo 3y ago
> a project virtually none of us know about You may be surprised! For context, R7RS is the latest standard for Scheme. Actually it's two standards: a 'small' one for the core language (similar to R5RS; this was finished a decade ago), whilst this involves the 'large' standard, which is trying to agree on a "standard library". Some reasons people may have upvoted this, or otherwise be interested in Scheme: - R7RS has been dragging on for so long, it may be nice to see some/any sort of status update - Scheme has so many diverse implementations (Racket, Guile, Gambit, Chicken, Chez, Stalin, etc.) that it's really important to have some common standards. - Scheme was a major influence on Javascript (along with Self) - Scheme pioneered many features that are now taken for granted, e.g. first-class functions (it's a "1-lisp"), lexical scope, tail-call elimination, continuation-passing style, call/cc, etc. - Scheme is commonly used as a scripting language by applications written in other languages (similar to Lua). Indeed, Guile is the "official" extension language of the GNU project (e.g. see Guix, Shepherd, etc.). - Scheme was/is taught at many schools and university courses - Well-known textbooks like SICP use Scheme; and indeed guide the reader through writing their own implementation! - Scheme is used for programming language research (e.g. "towers of interpreters", (delimited) continuations, miniKanren, etc.). Indeed Racket used to be called PLT Scheme (PLT = Programming Language Theory)
- zem 3y ago
  > - R7RS has been dragging on for so long, it may be nice to see some/any sort of status update that's why i upvoted! this is a pretty significant status update if you're interested in r7rs or scheme in general.
j-wags 3y ago
I upvoted because I'm involved in a growing OSS project that's tangling with similar questions of scope and governance. Simultaneously being responsible for everything from software deployment and PR reviews to project scoping and interpersonal conflict de-escalation is absolutely exhausting. I'm fantasizing/extrapolating that many of the people writing "so sorry to see you go" messages were the ones being quarrelsome and refusing compromise, and now they're getting the defect-defect outcome.
- johncowan 3y ago
  Not the case. Anyway, it's not about being quarrelsome, it's about having a different point of view. As for compromise, it's hard to compromise between strictness vs. laxness, for example. Child A: I want the whole pie! Child B: How about we split it 50/50? Adult C: You two need to compromise. A gets 75%, B gets 25%. (I am not implying that any particular persons are A, B, and C here.)
fud101 3y ago
Many of us learned Scheme or Lisp and are familiar with Scheme even if we never use it.
dannyobrien 3y ago
I knew about it! I have been following JCowan's work on this and other similar areas (like SRFI https://srfi.schemers.org/ https://srfi.schemers.org/ which may be a more tractable approach to growing Scheme). He's an amazing force for good!

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

chriswarbo 3y ago

> a project virtually none of us know about You may be surprised! For context, R7RS is the latest standard for Scheme. Actually it's two standards: a 'small' one for the core language (similar to R5RS; this was finished a decade ago), whilst this involves the 'large' standard, which is trying to agree on a "standard library". Some reasons people may have upvoted this, or otherwise be interested in Scheme: - R7RS has been dragging on for so long, it may be nice to see some/any sort of status update - Scheme has so many diverse implementations (Racket, Guile, Gambit, Chicken, Chez, Stalin, etc.) that it's really important to have some common standards. - Scheme was a major influence on Javascript (along with Self) - Scheme pioneered many features that are now taken for granted, e.g. first-class functions (it's a "1-lisp"), lexical scope, tail-call elimination, continuation-passing style, call/cc, etc. - Scheme is commonly used as a scripting language by applications written in other languages (similar to Lua). Indeed, Guile is the "official" extension language of the GNU project (e.g. see Guix, Shepherd, etc.). - Scheme was/is taught at many schools and university courses - Well-known textbooks like SICP use Scheme; and indeed guide the reader through writing their own implementation! - Scheme is used for programming language research (e.g. "towers of interpreters", (delimited) continuations, miniKanren, etc.). Indeed Racket used to be called PLT Scheme (PLT = Programming Language Theory)

zem 3y ago
> - R7RS has been dragging on for so long, it may be nice to see some/any sort of status update that's why i upvoted! this is a pretty significant status update if you're interested in r7rs or scheme in general.

j-wags 3y ago

I upvoted because I'm involved in a growing OSS project that's tangling with similar questions of scope and governance. Simultaneously being responsible for everything from software deployment and PR reviews to project scoping and interpersonal conflict de-escalation is absolutely exhausting. I'm fantasizing/extrapolating that many of the people writing "so sorry to see you go" messages were the ones being quarrelsome and refusing compromise, and now they're getting the defect-defect outcome.

johncowan 3y ago
Not the case. Anyway, it's not about being quarrelsome, it's about having a different point of view. As for compromise, it's hard to compromise between strictness vs. laxness, for example. Child A: I want the whole pie! Child B: How about we split it 50/50? Adult C: You two need to compromise. A gets 75%, B gets 25%. (I am not implying that any particular persons are A, B, and C here.)

fud101 3y ago

Many of us learned Scheme or Lisp and are familiar with Scheme even if we never use it.

dannyobrien 3y ago

I knew about it! I have been following JCowan's work on this and other similar areas (like SRFI https://srfi.schemers.org/ https://srfi.schemers.org/ which may be a more tractable approach to growing Scheme). He's an amazing force for good!