My Guile Wishlist

[Evan Prodromou]

So, while I've been thinking about Guile, I've been considering some
of the things that I wish were part of the system that aren't. Because
they're on my mind right now, I figure I'll post them.

1. I wish there weren't so much detritus in the Scheme interface that
   Guile provides.

2. I wish that there was One Good Way To Do It, and that other ways
   were optionally loadable with a module for compatibility.

3. I wish that when I loaded Guile, I could get a system with only
   R5RS Scheme + modules support, until I started loading stuff. I
   wish that anything in Guile that was an enhancement to Scheme had
   to be loaded with (use-modules).

4. I wish that I could do this:

   #! /usr/bin/env guile                         
   !#

5. I wish I could figure out the scm_ interface.

6. I wish that I could add Guile to existing programs, like Apache,
   with those programs' loadable module systems, without having to
   modify the program's "main" function.

7. I really, really wish there was a mod_guile. Did I mention that
   already?

8. I wish that GUMM was up and working.

9. I wish that Guile was so good that GNU projects wouldn't even
    think about using any other scripting/extension language.

10. I wish that there was a project library with everything under the
    sun that you could want in it.

11. I wish that starting-off Guile programmers felt a little
    disappointed because it was too easy.

12. I wish that when I went through the documentation for Guile, I
    would be constantly amazed at the elegance and utility of the
    design, rather than thinking, "What the hell is a low-level object
    interface, why do none of the functions have reasonable
    documentation, and why the hell would I ever use this?" or, "Who
    cares what Aubrey Jaffer did in 1993?"

So, let me re-iterate: I love Guile. I use it all the time. But these
things would make me happier than I am now.

~ESP

-- 
Evan Prodromou
address@hidden