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Comment by davexunit | Hacker News Reader

If you'd prefer to use Scheme over Common Lisp and would like to get your hands dirty, consider hacking on guile-wm. I try it out from time to time and make small patches to improve it. You can modify guile-wm at runtime by connecting to the REPL server using telnet or the geiser Emacs extension. I recall StumpWM not having something as convenient.

I wish guile-wm was under more active development, so maybe a few more hackers could help get the ball rolling.

https://github.com/mwitmer/guile-wm

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You are mistaken.

One could always modify StumpWM at runtime, via SLIME, which is far superior to geiser. Common Lisp is also superior to Scheme (as a language) and SBCL/CCL are miles better than Guile in particular, Guile being one of the worst Scheme implementations out there.

Those are a lot of claims to throw out there in one sentence. Can you elaborate a bit (although I'll give you SLIME over Geiser)?

The incompatibilities between Schemes is one for starters.

The core Scheme language seems pretty small compared to CL so compatibility might not be the best argument to make. The best you can say about CL is that it was designed with the expectation of incompatibility.

For libraries, CL has the same problems as Scheme so it's a wash. I hit this keenly when interacting with the OS (POSIX calls, mostly).

I do find even outside-the-standard CL libraries somewhat more portable than Scheme libraries. Varies by library, but CL library authors seem to make more of an effort to test on multiple implementations, using conditional compilation where necessary. It's semi-standard to use a compatibility layer for extensions, e.g. use Bordeaux-Threads rather than directly using sb-thread. Whereas Scheme programming style (at least in the Chicken and Racket ecosystems, the two I've used) seems to make more direct use of implementation-specific functions and comes with less expectation that any nontrivial program will run on another implementation without porting.

At least that's the case in the newer "open" CL world; older CL code, especially commercial code, more often did target a specific implementation like Franz, which is more like the Scheme approach.

No, CL doesn't have the same problems as Scheme, not by a long shot. See Quicklisp or cliki.net even. All these libraries (Quicklisp alone has 1000+ libraries last I checked) work perfectly fine on _multiple_ CL implementations.

You doing work on Linux and need a very fast compiler? Use SBCL, 3rd party libraries continue to work (unless they're platform specific)

Doing work on OSX or Windows? Use CCL. 3rd party libraries continue to work (unless they're platform specific).

This flexibility is absent from the Scheme world, with the myriad slightly incompatible implementations and extremely fragmented library space. The emergence of Quicklisp for Common Lisp was so important that it alone KILLED Scheme for any sort of practical use. For most cases, one has not the slightest incentive to stray from using Common Lisp these days, and if he does, he better have a good reason.

What is the equivalent for Scheme? The SRFI hell? _shudder_

Yes, I'm sure that's what's behind the new R7RS.

Your knowledge of Guile is outdated. Read http://wingolog.org

> Common Lisp is also superior to Scheme (as a language)

Your comment would be much better without this bit, which is entirely subjective.

All what humans say is subjective.

Yes, I was mistaken about the SLIME integration. I only used a primitive REPL. The rest of your response is total garbage. Guile is a really good Scheme implementation, imo.

Depends what you mean by really good Scheme implementation.

Guile is a GNU project, which means that if you care about (say) Windows (gasp), you're shit out of luck.

The same used to be true about OSX 2-3 years ago, I haven't bothered to check again since then.

Coupled with the fact, that maybe 2-3? people are actively working on Guile (guess what platform they're focusing on), and that pretty much nobody is using Guile besides little toy projects, things are not looking good.

No, a really good Scheme implementation would be, Racket or Chicken. Hell, even Gambit is objectively better and more mature than Guile. I guess you're too blind to see that.

"Guile is a GNU project, which means that if you care about (say) Windows (gasp), you're shit out of luck."

Are you using StumpWM on windows?

I am addressing Guile being in my view one of the worst Scheme implementations out there, StumpWM has nothing to do with this. Being tied to, effectively, a single platform does.

Sure. I just think it's a little weird to demand portability from something whose raison d'être is as an extension language for its host OS, in a context where we were originally discussing an extension language for something that is likewise non-portable.

It's been years since I've used StumpWM, but I believe you can accomplish a similar setup using SLIME (http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/StumpWM).

Oh, cool. It just takes a little bit more Elisp for a full SLIME environment. Thanks!

I liked StumpWM when I used it, but as a Schemer, I'm inclined to use/hack guile-wm.

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