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Brandon J. Van Every | 1 Feb 2007 09:12
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inventory of community skills

Hi all,

I've previously attempted to organize various communities.  Several of 
them have been technical.  One I even partly succeeded at: the Seattle 
Functional Programmers.  http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SeaFunc/  It 
lives on without me; I really haven't been involved for almost a year 
now.  I may come back to it, but not without new purpose and energy.

One of the difficulties of organizing a community, is getting people to 
do things.  What causes people to actually want to do things?  Where's 
the Tom Sawyer "paint the fence" element of it all?  For those not 
familiar with the story, Tom tricks all the neighborhood kids into 
thinking that painting the fence is a game.  He says it's ringing a bell 
on a steamer, and all the neighborhood kids buy it.  "Clang!  Clang!"  
He sits back and munches an apple while everyone does the work for him.  
The fence is elaborately painted with many coats, at a far higher 
quality than he personally would have accomplished.

I'm not trying to set you up for gratuitous exploitation.  I think 
people realize I do my fair share.  What I am trying to do, is figure 
out how to grow the Chicken community by roughly an order of magnitude.  
I'd like to get us out of the tens of contributors and into the 
hundreds.  We have a core of good people who work on things that are 
very much needed.  But we don't really have all that many people.  I am 
inclined to believe that if we had a lot more people, a lot more would 
get done.  I know "The Mythical Man Month" is topical to such a 
discussion.  But as I see it, solo people are currently working on big 
tedious jobs, and they lose motivation.  Certainly that's what I'm going 
through right now.
(Continue reading)

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Brandon J. Van Every | 1 Feb 2007 19:44
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other leading Schemes

How many other Schemes out there would be considered "leading products" 
or "principal competition?"  I will define this as Scheme communities 
that are larger than Chicken, with more developers and mindshare.  It 
seems like the list might be:

- PLT Scheme
- Gambit Scheme

Anyone think there's another Scheme worth adding?

Now personally, I think the biggest source of Chicken's growth would 
come from developers who are not using Scheme, rather than poaching 
other Scheme developers.  There's simply tons more non-Schemers out 
there.  So the experience of the first-time Scheme user is very 
important.  But I think it's also important to look at why other Scheme 
communities are larger than Chicken, and what the Chicken community can 
learn from that.

I'm told that Gambit has been ported to the Nintendo DS hand-held game 
console.

Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
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Robin Lee Powell | 1 Feb 2007 19:53

segfault bug in string->number


Given the following code (with giant strings snipped):

- -------------------------------

(use srfi-1)
(use srfi-13)

(define bigstring SNIP
(define bigstring2 SNIP

(write (string-length bigstring))
(display "\n")
(write (string->number bigstring))
(display "\n")
(write (string-length bigstring2))
(display "\n")
(write (string->number bigstring2))
(display "\n")

- -------------------------------

The strings most certainly do not encode numbers, and that *should*
be obvious from the first few characters, which are "le i mi cu nu
do la se lo lu li'u".

The following output occurs:

root <at> mooix> csc -O2 -d0 /tmp/stn.scm ; /tmp/stn
4107
(Continue reading)

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Dinesh Nadarajah | 1 Feb 2007 20:10
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Re: other leading Schemes

I would probably aslo include Kawa Scheme written for the Java platform.

Regards,

-Dinesh

On 2/1/07, Brandon J. Van Every < bvanevery <at> gmail.com> wrote:
How many other Schemes out there would be considered "leading products"
or "principal competition?"  I will define this as Scheme communities
that are larger than Chicken, with more developers and mindshare.  It
seems like the list might be:

- PLT Scheme
- Gambit Scheme

Anyone think there's another Scheme worth adding?

Now personally, I think the biggest source of Chicken's growth would
come from developers who are not using Scheme, rather than poaching
other Scheme developers.  There's simply tons more non-Schemers out
there.  So the experience of the first-time Scheme user is very
important.  But I think it's also important to look at why other Scheme
communities are larger than Chicken, and what the Chicken community can
learn from that.

I'm told that Gambit has been ported to the Nintendo DS hand-held game
console.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every



_______________________________________________
Chicken-users mailing list
Chicken-users <at> nongnu.org
http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/chicken-users 

_______________________________________________
Chicken-users mailing list
Chicken-users <at> nongnu.org
http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/chicken-users
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felix winkelmann | 1 Feb 2007 20:31
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Re: segfault bug in string->number

On 2/1/07, Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell <at> digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
>
> The following output occurs:
>
> root <at> mooix> csc -O2 -d0 /tmp/stn.scm ; /tmp/stn
> 4107
> #f
> 5065
> zsh: segmentation fault  /tmp/stn
>
> I'm not going to try to patch it, because I *loathe* C.  In fact,
> I'm using Scheme largely *because* I loathe C (I'm replacing bits of
> C in the project I'm working on with it).

And right you are about loathing it, because otherwise you might even
make mistakes like this:

% darcs diff runtime.c
7278c7278
<   C_memcpy(sptr = buffer, C_c_string(str), n);
---
>   C_memcpy(sptr = buffer, C_c_string(str), n > (STRING_BUFFER_SIZE - 1) ? STRING_BUFFER_SIZE : n);

cheers,
felix
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Ian Oversby | 1 Feb 2007 22:14
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Compiling a file into both .dll and .o

Hi,

I have two scheme files that I wish to compile into a single executable.  
One of the files has
embedded C code and is the library.  The other file uses functions defined 
in the library.

I've added the following declaration to the top of the library:

(declare (unit win32_lib))

And this one to the top of the other file:

(declare (uses win32_lib))

I compile both of these with csc -c <file-name>

In addition, I would like to be able to load the library into csi and test 
it interactively.
Unfortunately, with the unit declaration at the top, it doesn't seem to 
compile
correctly with the -dynamic -dll flags.  Is there some way I can get the 
same file to
compile both dynamically and statically?

Actually, thinking about it, can I use -prologue to add the declare line 
just when I'm
compiling statically and is this the best way to do it?

Thanks,

Ian

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minh thu | 1 Feb 2007 22:21
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Re: other leading Schemes

2007/2/1, Dinesh Nadarajah <dinesh.nadarajah <at> gmail.com>:
> I would probably aslo include Kawa Scheme written for the Java platform.
>
> Regards,
>
> -Dinesh
>
>
> On 2/1/07, Brandon J. Van Every < bvanevery <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> > How many other Schemes out there would be considered "leading products"
> > or "principal competition?"  I will define this as Scheme communities
> > that are larger than Chicken, with more developers and mindshare.  It
> > seems like the list might be:
> >
> > - PLT Scheme
> > - Gambit Scheme
> >
> > Anyone think there's another Scheme worth adding?
> >
> > Now personally, I think the biggest source of Chicken's growth would
> > come from developers who are not using Scheme, rather than poaching
> > other Scheme developers.  There's simply tons more non-Schemers out
> > there.  So the experience of the first-time Scheme user is very
> > important.  But I think it's also important to look at why other Scheme
> > communities are larger than Chicken, and what the Chicken community can
> > learn from that.
> >
> > I'm told that Gambit has been ported to the Nintendo DS hand-held game
> > console.
> >
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Brandon Van Every
> >
> >
Hi Brandon,

although you first start your mail with a question, what's the
underlying intention ?
I can't understand why there's so much discussion about 'community
size' and 'growing' and  so on... it's the same on every mailing list
I've read.

Don't take my question offensively; it's really not the goal...

thu
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John Cowan | 1 Feb 2007 22:55

Re: Compiling a file into both .dll and .o

Ian Oversby scripsit:

> In addition, I would like to be able to load the library into csi and 
> test it interactively.
> Unfortunately, with the unit declaration at the top, it doesn't seem to 
> compile
> correctly with the -dynamic -dll flags.  Is there some way I can get the 
> same file to
> compile both dynamically and statically?

See
http://galinha.ucpel.tche.br:8080/Non%20standard%20macros%20and%20special%20forms#define-extension .

Alternatively, have your outer library include your inner one:
this provides the advantages of block compilation.

--

-- 
John Cowan    http://ccil.org/~cowan    cowan <at> ccil.org
Economists were put on this planet to make astrologers look good.
        --Leo McGarry
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John Cowan | 1 Feb 2007 23:18

Re: other leading Schemes

Brandon J. Van Every scripsit:

> How many other Schemes out there would be considered "leading products" 
> or "principal competition?"  I will define this as Scheme communities 
> that are larger than Chicken, with more developers and mindshare.   

Most serious Scheme programmers use multiple Schemes according to
interest, convenience, or necessity.  Different versions have
different strengths and weaknesses and are not really in competition;
you are not going to get much by trying to cannibalize users of
other versions.

--

-- 
LEAR: Dost thou call me fool, boy?      John Cowan
FOOL: All thy other titles              http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
             thou hast given away:      cowan <at> ccil.org
      That thou wast born with.
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Kon Lovett | 1 Feb 2007 23:06

ANN: SRFI-27 1.5


Hi,

Release 1.5 of SRFI-27 is available. Changes:

1) 'srfi-27-distributions' are NOT automatically loaded when  
'srfi-27' used. I think the file is too large when only random  
numbers are needed.

2) Split entropy sources into separate files.

3) Added Windows Cryptography support for entropy.

4) Added user supplied entropy. Useful when fixed seeding is desired.

Best Wishes,
Kon
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Gmane