Re: [Scheme-reports] "module" vs. "library"

[Denis Washington <denisw@x>]

Am 08.07.2011 11:47, schrieb Alaric Snell-Pym:
> On 07/07/11 18:52, John Cowan wrote:
>
>> As I've pointed out before, application programmers don't really need to
>> make their code portable between Schemes any more, because each Scheme
>> (with a very few exceptions) is itself highly portable.  It's library
>> programmers that really need and benefit from standardization.
>
> +1
>
> An app that doesn't use any non-portable features (GUIs? Means of
> packaging apps for distribution, even?) is often rather boring.

OK, this is getting somewhat off-topic, but I felt the need to reply.

GUIs are not inherently unportable. In fact, if there were something 
like a portable FFI (which, e.g., Common Lisp has with CFFI), it would 
be no problem to write a wrapper for something like GTK+ or wxWindows 
that is portable among implementations (at least the one that don't run 
on non-C platforms such as .NET or the JVM) and base your app on that. 
So I don't see why portable applications should be necessarily "boring".

To be honest, Scheme is one of the few languages I know in which you 
have to tie yourself so intimately with one single implementation to 
write any serious applications. I mean, how often do you write, say, a 
C++ implementation that only works with the Wacom C++ compiler? I find 
it a bit sad that there are such a wealth of Scheme implementations, but 
such little ground for actually sharing Scheme code, especially for 
things that need interaction with native libraries.

Regards,
Denis Washington

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