Hacker News Reader

Comment by rthomas6 | Hacker News Reader

>The main issue the Emacs developers seem to have with Guile is that it will give developers choices as to whether to write Emacs extensions in Scheme, Elisp, or Javascript/Python/Whatever else Guile supports

I don't understand why they care? Why would the Emacs developers feel the need to debug compatibility if someone else wrote a shitty extension? The onus would be on the extension developer to fix the extension.

View on HN

Sure the problem defaults to the package maintainer, but historically popular and/or useful packages have seen their way into the main GNU distribution. Just leaving the possibility open has some long-term consequences for the project.

Quoting the linked email:

  So if we go for Guile-Emacs, we'll be stuck with Guile, i.e. we'd
  have (old and new) packages that use Elisp, new packages that use
  Scheme, maybe yet other new packages that use, say, Javascript (or some
  other language support by Guile).  That would make the work of Emacs
  (and GNU ELPA) maintenance harder.

So don't accept packages into the Emacs core that don't meet their standards? It's okay to have project standards but limiting how other people use your tool seems terribly misguided for a GNU project.

I think it's largely a cultural objection, and one I feel is pretty valid. I would hate to see Emacs turned into a javascript playground.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com