Gambit-C Scheme has become my new C

I might be writing an article about this soon: Scheme is a high level language - great for all around development, and Gambit-C can (once an application is developed in a very productive Emacs + Slime + Gambit-C environment) be used to create small and very efficient native applications. BTW, if you use an OS X or Windows installer, also get the source distribution for the examples directory.

In Unix tradition, I like to build a set of tools as command line applications, and Gambit-C is very nice for this.

Comments

  1. I'm just curious how you switch back and forth between LISP, Scheme, Java/Scala, and Ruby so much in your blog. Are you involved in projects that use multiple languages, or do you just do an awful lot of tinkering in your spare time?

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  2. Hello Esau,

    Good question! Thanks for asking.

    I usually work as a consultant between 15 and 20 hours a week - in the last 4 years, that consulting time has been fairly evenly split between Java, Ruby, and Common Lisp. These are my "money languages."

    On average, I spend about 15 to 20 hours a week working on books and/or articles (paid for writing). I enjoy writing!

    I also spend 15 to 20 hours a week spent on some combination of research, commercial product development, and self-learning projects. This is the "tinkering" time :-)

    So, I spend on average 45 to 60 hours a week in front of a computer. Ouch! However, since I usually work from home, I do save commuting time, which is good, and I have a hiking trail head to a US forest service area 100 feet from my house. This also saves lots of time since when I want to go hiking I don't have to spend a lot of time in the car getting to where I can hike (unless my friends want to try new hiking locations). I can also kayak near my home, and my main hobbies are cooking and music. So, I am really lucky getting to spend almost all of my time doing things that I enjoy. I get to spend more time doing things I love doing by trying to eliminate wasted time like commuting, watching TV, etc.

    Probably more information than you wanted :-)

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  3. Hello again Esau,

    To specifically answer your question on Gambit-C Scheme: I am working on a commercial product (which may never get released, depending on how much time I have for it) and I am using Gambit-C for that. I would do it in Ruby, but Ruby is too slow for this particular application. I would do it in Common Lisp, but compiled native applications written in Common Lisp are too large, and don't have the few millisecond startup times of applications built with Gambit-C (same reason I don't use Java for this).

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  4. I appreciate the answers, thanks. I work 40 hours a week and commute another 8, and I have young kids to chase around. I have been itching to use something nicer than the Java I use at work (no offense to Java fans) in the evenings, but by the time the kids are in bed I can't concentrate.

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  5. I'm interested in how you integrate Gambit with SLIME. Could you explain a little?

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  6. Hello Martin,

    The Gambit-C web site has very good instructions for using Gambit-C with Emacs. I would prefer that you follow those directions, but, here are the snippets from my .emacs file

    (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.scm$" . scheme-mode))


    (autoload 'gambit-inferior-mode "gambit" "Hook Gambit mode into cmuscheme.")
    (autoload 'gambit-mode "gambit" "Hook Gambit mode into scheme.")
    (add-hook 'inferior-scheme-mode-hook (function gambit-inferior-mode))
    (add-hook 'scheme-mode-hook (function gambit-mode))
    (setq scheme-program-name "gsc -:d-")

    Best regards,
    Mark

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  7. You wrote: "Emacs + Slime + Gambit-C". Does SLIME support Gambit-C? I didn't know that.

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  8. Hello lele, my mistake: Gambit-C has its own emacs support, which is very nice.

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