Re: Emacs Lisp's future

[David Kastrup]

Taylan Ulrich Bayirli/Kammer <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> At any rate, it has been mentioned previously in this discussion that
>> the Emacs developer list is not always considered a happy-go-lucky
>> environment.  So if it is the habit of GUILE developers to take out
>> revenge on a project and its users for enmity with single developers,
>> that's also relevant for making crucial GNU software depend on GUILE.
>
> I don't see the Guile developers taking revenge on anyone --especially
> not LilyPond as a whole-- but rather flaying off your efforts to take
> revenge on them by passing on your anger.

It was you who stated that you considered it likely that LilyPond was
not given any support of GUILE developers because of me being a persona
non grata.  At some point of time you have to decide whether you mean
what you say or not.

> No need to be happy-go-lucky, just less insulting.
>
> You could probably continue taking part on guile-devel if you were more
> cooperative.

Since I am unconditionally not permitted to post there, that is
hypothetical.

>> I think this interpretation of events is not making for a much better
>> outlook.  Particularly because Emacs development is more often than
>> other GNU projects governed by unpopular political decisions.  A
>> habit of retaliation and "see-where-this-will-get-you" in order to
>> pressure for a change in project lead is not likely going to work out
>> well.
>
> It's ironic that you would talk about retaliation and
> "see-where-this-will-get-you" behavior, or am I misunderstanding? :-)
>
> It feels more like that's your attitude, despite there being no
> pressure from the Guile side.

As there will be "no pressure" from the GUILE side once they decide
Emacs becomes too inconvient to support.

>> I don't think that you are better off selling this situation as a
>> personal vendetta, and it is not like the GUILE 2 problem was not
>> already there when I started to get involved with LilyPond.
>
> Let's be honest here, it was obvious from your first mail on this
> thread that there's something personal going on.  I knew absolutely
> nothing about your history on guile-devel (did not even recognize your
> name), yet guessed immediately that there was something fishy.

Not particularly hard to guess since I pointed _out_ that there was
something fishy.

>> "This is not possible" will be defined under the constraints of GUILE
>> remaining Scheme according to GUILE's vision of interpretating the
>> Scheme standard and its further evolution.
>
> Reminder that Guile-Emacs, in its current alpha state, already runs
> ERC, Gnus, rcirc, Dired, term, comint, TRAMP, c-mode, etc.  There will
> definitely not be much that is impossible.

Emacs is the platform for an ecosystem supporting thousands of packages.
That requires a rather high level of compatibility.

While you have ventured to say that you consider the move to Guile-Emacs
as less disruptive as that to lexical binding, you have glossed over the
fact that lexical binding has to be _explicitly_ enabled on a
file-by-file basis, meaning that old code will run unchanged and with
dynamic bindings.

One cannot help the impression that there is a certain elasticity to the
claims of what will be possible under which conditions that make them
less than useful for long-range planning.

Brad's status report in contrast was rather to the point, and the web
page at <URL:http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacsTodo> paints a
more realistic picture of the current situation as well.

At the current point of time, it definitely appears that the marketing
department should not fear being overtaken by the engineering
department, even though the latter is making solid progress.

-- 
David Kastrup