Scheme - no value in Scheme

Author

no value in Scheme

SeaFuncSpam@gmail.com

2006-03-13, 3:57 am

or any of the other weird languages. This is a sweeping exaggeration,
but it's been mostly true for me.

Why me? Almost 3 years ago, I had a train wreck with 3D graphics, C++,
and a spherical hexified icosahedron. This was during the dot.com
bust. It pretty much ended whatever semblance of a career I had, and
ultimately led me to bankruptcy. C++ was pretty clearly a failure for
"geometric glue" problems, i.e. knocking together structural
relationships quickly. C++ was also a lousy prototyping language.
Really the only thing C++ has going for it is speed, at the expense of
pain. And familiarity.

Familiarity.

I thought, "Should I use a better language?" I thought, "Should I use
other people's open source code?" I spent nearly the next 3 years
pursuing both avenues. This has led me... nowhere. Well, ok, I'm
wiser in the theoretical underpinnings of computerdom. But that's it.
I have nothing else to show for it. From a productivity standpoint,
chasing the unfamiliar has been a complete waste of time.

I can't honestly tell anybody to use advanced programming languages.
The tools associated with them often suck, because they lack critical
mass. Maybe that's not true in some problem domains, maybe some
problem domains are well trodden and one gets along fine. It's a
really lousy situation in 3D graphics though. Let's face it, the rest
of the world is doing C++ and only mavericks ever try anything else.
It's a disappointing reality but if you piss in the wind long enough
and hard enough, you realize how wet and stinky and yellow you are.

The learning curves, both for new language paradigms and for the tools,
are long. It wouldn't be so bad if Scheme were industry standard, if
we all started on it back in college, if all the tools were written in
it, and we just had years and years and years of tedious leveraged
experience. I don't see any fundamental barriers to understanding
Scheme. But it takes a long time, and the learning curve everyone else
invested in is C/C++. Why should I ever tell a proficient C/C++
programmer to drop what he's doing and do something else?

Sure, every program over X size has invented half of Lisp / Scheme
whatever in it. THAT MAY VERY WELL BE FASTER AND MORE PRODUCTIVE than
bothering with completely different languages and toolchains. I mean,
what kind of stuff could I have written in 3 years if I had continued
with the crappy inelegant C++ shit I already had to start with?

There's no money in this. There's no business model in this. There's
only endless chasing around and around of yet another broken tool. Yet
another clumsy solution that 1 guy on the internet cooked up somewhere,
that sorta works, or sorta doesn't. Open Source is described by some
as "Open Sores."

Am I done with Scheme? Oddly enough, not yet. You see, I think the
entire computer industry is complete shit. So, I might as well use
Scheme! I'm merely *wishing* that it was possible for me to have kept
going, 3 years ago, with that C++ torture code. But it wasn't. It was
too shitty. So I went out and found other ways to do things that are
shitty. Different kind of shit. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
Maybe I will eventually say been there, done that, and collect all 10
t-shirts. For now, I'm more optimistic about turning Scheme into
something that isn't shit, than I am about C++. C++ is an evolutionary
dead end; Scheme is an invitation to do buckets more work in the hope
of *someday* realizing something that isn't shit.

Man was I a fool to think I could take on all these problems of
industry single handedly. When you don't have a paycheck for your
computer work, and no kind of student support either, and you have to
hold an irrelevant day job to stay afloat, you realize how totally
overwhelming, unproductive, and completely shitty the entire world of
computerdom is. Big bucks are the only lubrication that make it
palatable. Well, unless there's a way to run off to the Third World
where it's cheap, so I can sit around and code and not be bothered for
a long time....

Oh, and yes I still run SeaFunc. And it still meets every 3 w

s, and
plenty of really good functional programmers attend it. It doesn't
require me, it has a life of its own, I could hand over the
announcement job to someone else at any time. Oh, and I'm still
working on CMake builds for Chicken Scheme. Chicken hasn't
specifically failed me yet; there's just way more work to "put things
right" on Windows than I ever wanted there to be. If I had had
foresight, I might not have done it. In hindsight, I've made progress,
so I keep going.

I'm just done pretending that all of this is anything but historical
circumstance. I'm on a trajectory, which I think will eventually lead
me to The Way. I just think it's going to be years in coming. Things
are that bad. Do you ever wake up and realize just how bad all this
computer stuff really is? How cottage industry it all is? We're in
the stone ages. We're not that far above sticking wires into boards
and making little beeps and blips.

BEEP!
<boop>

BEEP!
<boop>

Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur

SeaFuncSpam@gmail.com

2006-03-13, 3:57 am

SeaFuncSpam@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Oh, and yes I still run SeaFunc. And it still meets every 3 w

s, and
> plenty of really good functional programmers attend it. It doesn't
> require me, it has a life of its own, I could hand over the
> announcement job to someone else at any time.

I decided that time is now.
(new (Cruise (Director (of SeaFunc))))
Coming Soon!

bunny351@yoho-gmail.com

2006-03-13, 7:57 am

SeaFuncSpam@gmail.com schrieb:

>
> I'm just done pretending that all of this is anything but historical
> circumstance. I'm on a trajectory, which I think will eventually lead
> me to The Way. I just think it's going to be years in coming. Things
> are that bad. Do you ever wake up and realize just how bad all this
> computer stuff really is? How cottage industry it all is? We're in
> the stone ages. We're not that far above sticking wires into boards
> and making little beeps and blips.

Yes. I have this feeling once a w

, usually. You just have to
get used to it. And try to make it a tiny little bit better.

cheers,
felix

SeaFuncSpam@gmail.com

2006-03-13, 7:57 am

bunny351@yoho-gmail.com wrote:
> SeaFuncSpam@gmail.com schrieb:
>
>
> Yes. I have this feeling once a w

, usually. You just have to
> get used to it. And try to make it a tiny little bit better.

Good to know that I'm not alone. BTW, my comments are not meant to
reflect badly on Chicken Scheme. Working with you, and also the CMake
guys, are among the more positive things that have happened in the past
2 years. Really that's a lot of my reason to continue; that and the
sense that I'm "not done" yet.

Cheers,
Brandon Van Every

bunny351@yoho-gmail.com

2006-03-14, 3:57 am

SeaFuncSpam@gmail.com schrieb:

>
> Good to know that I'm not alone. BTW, my comments are not meant to
> reflect badly on Chicken Scheme. Working with you, and also the CMake
> guys, are among the more positive things that have happened in the past
> 2 years. Really that's a lot of my reason to continue; that and the
> sense that I'm "not done" yet.

Oh, I didn't take it badly in any way. Software sucks, it's a fact. But
it can
also be fun trying to improve the situation.

Thanks for your support, Brandon!

cheers,
felix

Tom Lord

2006-03-19, 6:58 pm

fredaster122@yahoo.com wrote:
> THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT BRANDON J. VAN EVERY BEFORE REPLYING
> TO ONE OF HIS POSTS [....]

Everything you say may more may not be true. There may or may
not be more to the story than you say. Regardless, it is not your
place to say such things.

It is not your role to protect the participants in this forum from
themselves. Not in that way, at least.

Thanks,
-t

Slow Thought

2006-03-21, 3:57 am

Tom Lord wrote:
> fredaster122@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> Everything you say may more may not be true. There may or may
> not be more to the story than you say. Regardless, it is not your
> place to say such things.
>
> It is not your role to protect the participants in this forum from
> themselves. Not in that way, at least.
>
> Thanks,
> -t
Nor is it your role to judge Mr. Aster's 's role. I happen to agree
with his evaluation of Mr. Van Every's posts, having seen them in other
forums myself. While I chose not to take Mr. Van Every on, Mr. Aster
has every right to do so. You have the right to ignore him, as I ignore
Mr. Van Every.

You also have the right to disparage Mr. Aster, as he disparages Mr.
Van Every. As you imply, we all have a duty to ourselves to censor out
the noise.

Pat King

Tom Lord

2006-03-21, 3:57 am

Regular readers: skip the entire subthread, please.

Please Mr. King, do elaborate. I am intrigued by yr ideas
and wish to subscribe to yr magazine.

Frankly, I don't think there's enough ad hominem attacks
on usenet and I haven't been sure what to do about it.

My main complaint about fredaster was that his attempt
was so ... I dunno ... transparent. Too easily ignored as if
it were some kind of utterly unworthy crap.

You, on the other hand, seem to have the beginings of a
talent for dressing such crap with a nice sauce of pseudo-
intellectualism so as to make it pallatable. Please, let us
learn more of yr skills. Give us a further example, if
you will.

-t

p.s.: please be sure to work some keywords like "closures"
or "continuations" into yr reply. Those and similar seem to
be essential on this group, though I don't find words to tell
you why.

Slow Thought wrote:
> Tom Lord wrote:
> Nor is it your role to judge Mr. Aster's 's role. I happen to agree
> with his evaluation of Mr. Van Every's posts, having seen them in other
> forums myself. While I chose not to take Mr. Van Every on, Mr. Aster
> has every right to do so. You have the right to ignore him, as I ignore
> Mr. Van Every.
>
> You also have the right to disparage Mr. Aster, as he disparages Mr.
> Van Every. As you imply, we all have a duty to ourselves to censor out
> the noise.
>
> Pat King

Tom Lord

2006-03-21, 3:57 am

Hmm. Subtlety has never been my strong point.

O F'n Well,
-t

Tom Lord wrote:[color=darkred]
> Regular readers: skip the entire subthread, please.
>
> Please Mr. King, do elaborate. I am intrigued by yr ideas
> and wish to subscribe to yr magazine.
>
> Frankly, I don't think there's enough ad hominem attacks
> on usenet and I haven't been sure what to do about it.
>
> My main complaint about fredaster was that his attempt
> was so ... I dunno ... transparent. Too easily ignored as if
> it were some kind of utterly unworthy crap.
>
> You, on the other hand, seem to have the beginings of a
> talent for dressing such crap with a nice sauce of pseudo-
> intellectualism so as to make it pallatable. Please, let us
> learn more of yr skills. Give us a further example, if
> you will.
>
> -t
>
> p.s.: please be sure to work some keywords like "closures"
> or "continuations" into yr reply. Those and similar seem to
> be essential on this group, though I don't find words to tell
> you why.
>
>
>
> Slow Thought wrote:

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