Re: my latest blog post

[Catonano]

2018-06-08 16:25 GMT+02:00 Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden>:

Hi Catonano,

> Andy Wingo has a post in which he lists tasks he'd lie to be implemented on
> Guile, many of them have to do with the file format of the compiled files.
>
> Some love should go to the quality of the experience too, not only to the
> tech issues

These are very closely linked.  I mention this because it may not be
obvious to people like myself who don’t work on compilers.

FWIW, people *are* working on improving the experience of programming
with Guile.  Some do this by working on Geiser, others by writing
libraries that are well-suited for exploratory programming with Geiser,
etc.

I know

I'm not negating anyone's efforts

> Mark wrote to Fis in that thread on the Guile mailing list that in order to
> have better error messages, the compiler should be modified (and that would
> be an awful lot of work)

Exactly.  Please note that the compiler is currently being modified, so
it is not a good idea to start other big architectural changes right
now.

> I just think that the problem deserves to be mapped out so that people know
> what they're getting into

Certainly.  We cannot demand of other people to do this work for us,
though. 

I'm not demanding anything to anyone

I *offered* to edit the manual in a way that is more bearable in my opinion, in regard to macro expansion.

I don't now if I will ever be able to offer a proper macro stepping tool

Should I be able, I'd be glad to provide the community with it

 

If you follow guile-devel you will also see that some compiler
changes have resulted in certain regressions, which are debugged,
addressed, and ultimately fixed.  Losing certain means of debugging
things would also be considered a regression, and they can generally be
handled in the same way.

Again: I didn't negate anyone's work

I explicitl wrote that what made the difference is not the technology

 

Andy’s time is still limited.  What other people can do is discuss
*specific* cases on guile-devel and work towards a solution.  But please
do not demand of others to explain everything in detail.  (I’m directing
this at everyone who heeds my advice to go to guile-devel, not at any
one person in particular.)  In order to have a positive impact you also
need to learn enough about the state of the art to ensure that the
discussions can be productive.

I think I demonstrated I am ready to put some effort into this

And I think this remark is unfair

I know Andy was in good faith. I acknowledged again and again that there is a cognitive (cultural ?) problem

What I proposed is to focus on where we are now so that the right direction can be envisioned

I didn't scream that I want better error messages _right now_

Maybe the lesson here should be that the quality of the experience should be taken into account in the first place and not as an afterthough, as if it was the need of a random user

I was trying to underline the feedback that was brought here by a user

And I brought some feedback myself

Believe it or not, I am trying to _help_ Guile to improve

And the improvement is not technological, it's cultural

And saying I should come on guile-dev and actually provide what I thin is useful, nowing that I can't (not immediately is not a fair answer either

Because it's equivalent to a "fuck you"

This is discussed in some of the links I provided too

I devolved some time in making my case

It's some articulated and well thoug feedback. Of the kind that the Guile community is sorely missing

As for macro expansion, how would I have been supposed to know the context of macro expansion ?

Shouldn't I have been asking ?

 

For compiler design I have a lot of things to read before being able to
contribute meaningfully to a discussion; all I can do is record
instances where Guile produces poor error messages and try to figure out
what led to this outcome.  Once I’ve done my work I can share this with
other developers and get their input.

I don't know if I will ever delve into the compiler

For now, I just wanted to understan the store monad

Macro expansion is the first step of compiling, as far as I understand, anyway.

So taking care that it's reasonably discussed could be a first step in having more compiler hackers, some day

 

I am trying to contribute from where I am, not from where you require me to be

And this is valuable too, to some extent

If you don't see this, than you are confirming the cultural problem that I strived to depict

Some final remarks:

I should say that I’m rather unhappy with your labelling of the Guile
community as “toxic” or “full of jerks”.  This has not been my
experience at all, neither in my communications with the maintainers,
nor in the response to my modest contributions.

Good for you

My experience was different
 

I will say that it is a rather quiet community, though.  What you called
“the silent treatment” is just silence, which is occasionally punctured
by helpful comments.  As a co-maintainer of Guix I would feel very
uncomfortable if my replying to some (but not all) emails would be
construed as an act of aggression, or really any kind of silent attempt
at communicating something.  In that case I’d much rather *not* respond
to any emails.

Ok, I already applogized to Mark for having assumed that his silence was aggression, when it wasn't

Someone else made me notice this too

I'll apologize to you too

But if you take a look at thhe guile-user mailing list, and another loo at the guix-dev mailing list (or even to the guix help mailing list) you'll get 2 completely different outlooks

Maybe it's not aggression

Still there's something deeply different going on in the 2 places

 

With regards to the shouting match on #guile that you linked in your
blog post, I can only say that I would have likely stepped in had this
happened when I was around.  Textual communication certainly should not
reach these levels of apparent aggression.

What do you mean with "apparent" ?

I felt it was pretty substantial

I think that person should be reprimanded  and possibly temporary banned from the channels

My partecipation in the shouting was only a pale substitute of what I deem opportune