> When I started using Guile, I was fully in sync with the "embeddable > library" approach, which means that I'd write, say, 75% of an > application in C, and then arrange to have the remainder written in > Scheme in an extensible fashion. > > But I started really enjoying Scheme and wanting to write less C, more > Scheme. So why bother writing C at all when I could avoid it? Well, > for "performance reasons". And what are those "performance reasons"? > The interpreter is pretty slow, which is definitely not due to inherent > limitations of the language, but to the implementation. > > I'm convinced that it's possible to write a Scheme interpreter much > faster than ours. So I think that's one route we should take in 1.9. > The next step would be to have a compiler (to byte code, to C, > whatever). However, I think the interpreter should keep playing a > central role in Guile (because it always did, and because it's often > convenient to work with an interpreter), which is why I would consider > improving/rewriting the interpreter a major goal for 1.9. > > Maybe we should start a discussion about what we'd like to see in 1.9? > :-)
Well, for what it's worth, faster live "interpretation" of Scheme is really important to me, whether that means some kind of Scheme JIT compilation a la GNU Lightning or whatever. I'm still fairly wed to being able to "script" my C code with Scheme dynamically, so I hope Guile's not moving away from that significantly. Other non-specific, poorly-researched desires for 1.9: * Faster GC (this is probably pretty similar to "faster interpretation") * Integrated debugging and profiling tools * Guile was initially proposed as a multi-language scripting platform; is that still part of the mission? * Not related to 1.9 itself, but maybe a cleanup / redesign of the web page, including a cleanup of active projects, better integration with Savannah for bug tracking, etc. * Thorough updating of the documentation * Integration with Free Software VMs -- Bigloo currently lets you compile Scheme to CIL; it would be neat if you could do the same with Guile and then run on top of DotGNU. Or Kaffe. Or anything else. _______________________________________________ Guile-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/guile-devel
