5 ms·

It's such an amazing project, I wish it used something other than Guile but you can't have everything.

Zambyte 8mo ago
Other than Guile as in different Scheme implementations? It's usually not too difficult to port things between Schemes. Especially if you use standard R6RS or R7RS library syntax.
- noosphr 8mo ago
  Guiles debugging has been a nightmare in the 3.x series. Which is rather surprising since it was probably the easiest scheme to debug in the 1.x days. It got so bad I moved to racket as my daily driver.
  - feastingonslop 8mo ago
    Which LLM works best for Racket?
    - davidelettieri 8mo ago
      I found gemini 3 pro to be pretty good. Overall understanding of the code, code generation capabilities and ability to explain are all pretty good.
  - wwfn 8mo ago
    Can you say more? Guile's the only scheme I've tried (attempts at packaging for Guix). Debugging has been difficult, but I figured it was me struggling with new tools and API. Does racket have better facilities for introspection or discovery at the REPL?
    - pjmlp 8mo ago
      Yes, since years, all the way when it was still known as Dr. Scheme. It has a graphical experience similar to the survivors from Lisp is Great days, like LispWorks and Allegro Common Lisp, or Clojure with Cursive.
  - pjmlp 8mo ago
    Even better than PLT Scheme with Dr. Scheme, now Raket has ever been? I have my doubts, given its age.
- NeutralForest 8mo ago
  A different scheme that has great debugging and testing and also better docs.
zelphirkalt 8mo ago
Guile has lots of libraries though, and is the language of Guix. This makes it more likely for people to package their stuff via Guix. Guix itself enriches the ecosystem, and Guile projects can use Guix to make them reproducible. A few problems remain though. A good debugger, a good macro expander (geiser in Emacs is able to expand somehow), and solving the issues with R6RS library syntax and standard library bindings, are what comes to mind. Racket's multi-core abilities for a long time were mostly heavy weight (places, starting whole new Racket VMs), except for their implementation of futures, but that one was not always useful. I think recently the situation in Racket has improved, but I don't know, whether it is as good as Guile fibers and futures (which are different from futures in Racket).
- NeutralForest 8mo ago
  Aside from the debugging & testing I already mentioned, going only through guix is a tough sell considering the very tiny amount of people that use it. It's also incredibly slow and doesn't have many packages available. Even for Emacs, it has this weird way of going around Emacs-installed packages (GNU or MELPA channels). Just like Guile docs, it also doesn't tell you of a good way to do things, it only says "here is what exists" with too little guidance imo. It means people have to figure out how to setup things properly on top of all the rest. It makes for a terrible onboarding.
- nerdponx 8mo ago
  If Guile had more of the "batteries" from the Gauche standard library it might be the perfect all-purpose Scheme. But for just writing a simple application quickly and easily it's been impossible to beat Gauche for me, it's on par with Python and Ruby in that regard IMO.
  - zelphirkalt 8mo ago
    What kind of application do you write in Gauche? I am asking, because I might want to get more familiar with it, if it is great for something like GUI or web app. I know there is Guile Golf, but to me it feels unfinished, and I experienced segfaults and crashes, when not doing things exactly as shown in examples and using standard GTK procedures, so that one is kind of out for me, and guile-gi is still changing and seemed kinda complicated to use. On the web front, there is Artanis, but it is too opinionated for me, not a minimalistic framework. Still can build things on top of guile fibers concurrent web server, but then have to build lots of things myself. Recently, I used Python and tkinter, which works really well, and I would love to have good bindings for tk in Guile. On my search for Scheme and GUI, I also found stklos, but I have no idea how ready it is and what kind of libraries I would have available, if I built an application with it. Racket of course also has a GUI framework, that I have tried to use in the past, but it does not have a treeview widget. Has listbox though, with multiple columns. What does Gauche have to offer, specifically for application development? (GUI, or web, or other)

Other than Guile as in different Scheme implementations? It's usually not too difficult to port things between Schemes. Especially if you use standard R6RS or R7RS library syntax.

noosphr 8mo ago
Guiles debugging has been a nightmare in the 3.x series. Which is rather surprising since it was probably the easiest scheme to debug in the 1.x days. It got so bad I moved to racket as my daily driver.
- feastingonslop 8mo ago
  Which LLM works best for Racket?
  - davidelettieri 8mo ago
    I found gemini 3 pro to be pretty good. Overall understanding of the code, code generation capabilities and ability to explain are all pretty good.
- wwfn 8mo ago
  Can you say more? Guile's the only scheme I've tried (attempts at packaging for Guix). Debugging has been difficult, but I figured it was me struggling with new tools and API. Does racket have better facilities for introspection or discovery at the REPL?
  - pjmlp 8mo ago
    Yes, since years, all the way when it was still known as Dr. Scheme. It has a graphical experience similar to the survivors from Lisp is Great days, like LispWorks and Allegro Common Lisp, or Clojure with Cursive.
- pjmlp 8mo ago
  Even better than PLT Scheme with Dr. Scheme, now Raket has ever been? I have my doubts, given its age.
NeutralForest 8mo ago
A different scheme that has great debugging and testing and also better docs.

zelphirkalt 8mo ago

Guile has lots of libraries though, and is the language of Guix. This makes it more likely for people to package their stuff via Guix. Guix itself enriches the ecosystem, and Guile projects can use Guix to make them reproducible. A few problems remain though. A good debugger, a good macro expander (geiser in Emacs is able to expand somehow), and solving the issues with R6RS library syntax and standard library bindings, are what comes to mind. Racket's multi-core abilities for a long time were mostly heavy weight (places, starting whole new Racket VMs), except for their implementation of futures, but that one was not always useful. I think recently the situation in Racket has improved, but I don't know, whether it is as good as Guile fibers and futures (which are different from futures in Racket).

NeutralForest 8mo ago
Aside from the debugging & testing I already mentioned, going only through guix is a tough sell considering the very tiny amount of people that use it. It's also incredibly slow and doesn't have many packages available. Even for Emacs, it has this weird way of going around Emacs-installed packages (GNU or MELPA channels). Just like Guile docs, it also doesn't tell you of a good way to do things, it only says "here is what exists" with too little guidance imo. It means people have to figure out how to setup things properly on top of all the rest. It makes for a terrible onboarding.
nerdponx 8mo ago
If Guile had more of the "batteries" from the Gauche standard library it might be the perfect all-purpose Scheme. But for just writing a simple application quickly and easily it's been impossible to beat Gauche for me, it's on par with Python and Ruby in that regard IMO.
- zelphirkalt 8mo ago
  What kind of application do you write in Gauche? I am asking, because I might want to get more familiar with it, if it is great for something like GUI or web app. I know there is Guile Golf, but to me it feels unfinished, and I experienced segfaults and crashes, when not doing things exactly as shown in examples and using standard GTK procedures, so that one is kind of out for me, and guile-gi is still changing and seemed kinda complicated to use. On the web front, there is Artanis, but it is too opinionated for me, not a minimalistic framework. Still can build things on top of guile fibers concurrent web server, but then have to build lots of things myself. Recently, I used Python and tkinter, which works really well, and I would love to have good bindings for tk in Guile. On my search for Scheme and GUI, I also found stklos, but I have no idea how ready it is and what kind of libraries I would have available, if I built an application with it. Racket of course also has a GUI framework, that I have tried to use in the past, but it does not have a treeview widget. Has listbox though, with multiple columns. What does Gauche have to offer, specifically for application development? (GUI, or web, or other)