From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Tom Phillips To: guile-gtk@sources.redhat.com Subject: Re: Taking the defs file issue Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 04:17:00 -0000 Message-id: <3A0FDAC9.E6354AF9@omeninc.com> References: <200011122001.OAA18311@cs.utexas.edu> <878zqoeulm.fsf@raven.localnet> <87wve83eoa.fsf@zagadka.ping.de> <87k8a8d70j.fsf@raven.localnet> X-SW-Source: 2000-q4/msg00027.html Rob Browning wrote: > > Marius Vollmer writes: > > > I quite strongly disagree with this. In my view, the functions > > exported to the Scheme side must not be not be `dangerous' in the > > sense that a pilot error can not lead to memory corruption, memory > > leaks or similar. > > Well, I suppose this depends on your perspective, and what you want. > If you want to create a tool that lets you do from scheme the same > things you can do from C with a given C API, and if you want to > provide a way for people to *quickly* wrap *existing* C APIs without > having to write a lot of additional glue code, then I think it's going > to be *very* difficult to avoid the "dangerous" things you're talking > about. As someone who's been using guile and guile-gtk, I'd like to throw in my two cents. When I write in Scheme it's for its characteristics as a functional language. Any time I have to break down and resort to procedural constructs, or rely exclusively on side effects, the language loses some appeal. If I also needed to worry about memory allocation and deallocation, I think I'd be better off using another language, such as C, for example. I realize that I'm just one programmer, but I believe Scheme's functional aspects are what make it a good choice for certain applications. Tom Phillips