Re: Appreciation / Financial support

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On 05/06/12 06:10, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> As long as you seek out new technologies, you'll always get new
> perspectives on programming.
>
> I, like most people, have only a limited amount of time. Learning a
> programming language well enough to write code that sticks to wall
> when you throw it, is a significant investment, and if there is a
> choice, I'd invest in something that will pay off beyond working on
> LilyPond. Scheme has very use in any context, so it's not very
> attractive.

The problem with Scheme is that while it's theoretically beautiful its paradigm 
and syntax are quite different from most current mainstream programming 
languages.  That makes it a much harder language to ease into than most out 
there, and consequently harder to play around the edges of contributing or 
tweaking LilyPond.

Some while back I remember playing around with a snippet containing a scheme 
function for controlling the rules of transposition.  Even though I was only 
tweaking someone else's code it was very finnicky and difficult to get right. 
That almost certainly wouldn't have been the case if I'd been tweaking Java, 
Ruby or Python (all of which are programming languages I don't really _know_, 
but which are not difficult to ease into or to comprehend).

Regarding new languages, while I don't want to re-open the "alphabet soup" 
discussion, my suggestion wasn't simply a casual shout-out to a cool new 
language; it was a carefully-considered proposal based on concerns for 
programming power, ease and flexibility of syntax, code efficiency and 
suitability for the next generation of hardware.  New languages, with small 
current adoption, do carry a risk, but it's still possible to identify the 
combination of features, goals, ease of use (and adaptation) and community 
"feel" that point towards a future success.