Re: [Chicken-users] Standard APIs for databases, Web-apps

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Graham Fawcett wrote:

On 2/10/06, Brandon J. Van Every <address@hidden> wrote:
  

Still, I'll be honest, I have a hard time seeing that happening for
*any* Chicken egg.  It may be "standard for Chicken" but I'm not
convinced Chicken has a large enough user community to ever create
broader standards.  Python has tons more people than Chicken, it is much
much farther along in its tools and community evolution than Chicken
is.  Never mind Java.  Meanwhile, each Scheme implementation is a right
unto itself, the playing field is very fragmented.'
    

Points well taken. But it's never to early to start -- if evolution is
a community goal, then a little forthought into common interfaces is
better done sooner, rather than later when the community code base
(and resultant dependencies) may have grown significantly.
  

Well, it's just that Chicken is realistically at the stage where 1 guy does 1 thing.  Are there any large team efforts for any Chicken projects at all?  I see no evidence of it in the Eggs libraries, at a glance they all look like the works of solo authors.  Chicken itself is the only thing that seems to get multiple people working on it, for things like bug reports and builds on different systems and whatnot.  What I'm saying is, community planning doesn't have much value.  At this stage, if you want it, you build it.  For instance there's no reason for me to ask about OpenGL 2.0 binding details, what people would like to see.  I'm either going to do it or I'm not, and I'll be doing what I want.  Really, at such an early stage, it's unlikely that anyone will ever do anything useful, and even if they do they're only along for the ride.  Projects pretty much have to be "one person's baby" for awhile, until they get big enough that other people can be slotted into them.

So actually, yeah, I think it is too early to start.  On worrying about community database standards, that is.  I do think Chicken is large enough to consider issues that affect *all* Chicken users, or at least Chicken users on specific OS platforms, that sort of thing.  If more infrastructure is created for Chicken in general, then there will be more Chicken users, and then there will be more manpower for database standards projects and OpenGL 2.0 bindings and whatnot.

By all means implement whatever you wish to though.  I'm not a proponent of Stop Energy.
http://www.userland.com/whatIsStopEnergy

BTW I did float the idea of a standard OpenGL 2.0 binding for all Schemes on comp.lang.scheme.  Crickets chirped.  Nobody cares, nobody's doing 3D with Scheme.  I'm on the frontier.  Well, ok, OpenSceneGraph has got a Scheme binding, so there isn't *zero* 3D done in Scheme.  But really, there are very, very few projects that do any 3D.  Maybe you fare better in databaseland, I dunno.  It's just that, this apathy really hit home how fragmented the Scheme universe is.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every