Re: Appreciation / Financial support

[David Kastrup]

Han-Wen Nienhuys <address@hidden> writes:

> On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 3:20 PM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>>> There are two separate discussions here:
>>>
>>> - how do we offer to average user a way to extend the program. I agree
>>> that C++ is not the way to go
>>>
>>> - how do we offer developers an environment to extend LilyPond, were
>>> extensions go back into mainline; this is connected with getting more
>>> developers  on LilyPond.
>>
>> You can't separate the two.  Developers grow from users.  Look at the
>> TeX/LaTeX and Emacs communities: how much of the changes happen in the
>> binary, how much in the interpretative layers?  Where did most
>> developers get their first experiences and contact?
>
> Let me try to rephrase things: the more functionality is moved into
> the Scheme layers, the less people you can find who are capable of
> working on it.

Among programmers who never heard of LilyPond and acquired their skills
independently.

But the target audience of LilyPond is not programmers.  It is
musicians.

> Therefore, you should be careful with moving more and more code into
> the Scheme layer.

Guess what: I've been programming computers since the seventies, and I
was a hardcore C++ programmers years before I started on LilyPond.  I
had not worked with Scheme before LilyPond.

And it is still the Scheme layers that I first was working with.
"Comfortable with" is the wrong word.  And that was not because of the
language Scheme, but because its ties into LilyPond were not consistent
in a manner that made sense for me.

It's a bit like poetry written by a non-native speaker.  And that is
only partly the language's fault.

-- 
David Kastrup