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On Sun, 6 Dec 1998 22:43:37 -0500, kwright@tiac.net wrote: > > From: Greg Harvey <Greg.Harvey@thezone.net> > > > Jeff Read <bitwize@geocities.com> writes: > > > > > > I think the Guile team should pare it down a little. Make it a bit > > > smaller and a LOT faster > > > > The code size of guile is not any bigger than perl, python and > <... and Tck/Tk and so on> > > Whoa, Chill out! Why are you telling us all this? If anybody can > make it still smaller and faster, don't try to talk em out of it. > > The goal should not be "as good as <software>", but "as good > as possible". When the chearleader yells "Go team" don't > snarl "We've gone as far as them". Right - if you aim to be as-good-as the competition, you will always be slighly worse because the competition will keep improving. > I would put high priority on coherent and flexible design, closely > followed by correct implentation, but sometimes less code has fewer bugs. Well for sure you want simple and correct. Smaller code size is laudible - but, after correctness, speed is probably the most important feature. It seems that whenever the issue of speed comes up, somebody says 'speed is not important in a scripting language'. While that may be true in purely functional terms, it's dead wrong when it comes to popularising the language. If it's actually an important objective to the developers to promote Guile as a replacement for TcL then Guile must be lean and fast and ctax must work.