Re: [Jscheme-user] using JScheme ....

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On May 21, 2004, at 5:06 PM, Rahul wrote:

> Hi,
>
> 	i've not posted here before but i've been a long time user of 
> jscheme. thought i should share these ..

Its always nice to hear from other JScheme users...

>
> I used jscheme to a very large extent in my last project [i've just 
> joined another firm].
>
> [An administration interface for a webapplication that runs over 
> tomcat.]
> while I had a lot of trouble to get the management to accept jscheme 
> [I did a prototype with most of the functionality they needed]
> I encountered the highest resistance from Developers. [Mostly due to 
> the fact that it was neither jsp nor xslt which they were familiar 
> with]
> coupled withe the reputation of scheme as an academic language, not 
> for real world .. it was really interesting to argue the case :) .

When more projects that actually start to use Scheme the arguments will 
get easier.

How does management feel about Scheme now?
For example, would they be happy to have a link to their site from the 
JScheme website
talking about a success story? .... or would it be counter productive 
to advertise the fact?
Maybe they would prefer not to advertise the underlying implementation 
stories....

>
> One interesting point which they pointed out was also that , our 
> application was javascript intensive, and the amount of escaping
> that we needed to introduce for the curly braces made it look quite 
> ugly. [We were able to solve the prob partly by linking the js from 
> outside but
> for the left over script portions the problem still remained.]
>
> 	Since Jscheme has targeted the webplatform and javascript is one of 
> the beasts that we are likely to encounter very often in that arena,
> it would be nice to have some way of toggling the string delimiters 
> with some other strings.
That shouldn't be too hard. What delimiters would you suggest?

What would you think about some kind of general string delimiter say  
like this

        {{+ Here is "some" {javascript} or {CSS} or arrays A[x] or ...
              and here is a Scheme escape +[(Date.)]+
              hmmmm? +}}

where the character following the
       {{
indicates the stop character for the string, in this case
       +
and
     +[   ]+
would delimit the quasi-string escapes.....

So you could equivalently use a period

        {{. Here is "some" {javascript} or {CSS} or arrays A[x] or ...
              and here is a Scheme escape .[(Date.)].
              hmmmm? .}}

or a double quote

        {{" Here is "some" {javascript} or {CSS} or arrays A[x] or ...
              and here is a Scheme escape "[(Date.)]"
              hmmmm? "}}

and you could switch midway with each [...] providing an opportunity
to switch delimiters. For example, here we switch from " to * to @

        {{" Here is "some" {javascript} or {CSS} or arrays A[x] or ...
              and here is a Scheme escape "[(Date.)]*
              hmmmm?  here is a square bracket "["  see?
              maybe just switch for fun *[]@   hmmmm.. @}}

What do you think? Would this have helped make the code cleaner
and the developers happy?

What do other JSchemer's think of this notation?
Any other ideas for handling the string delimiter problem?

>
> 	Other than that I was able to convert some of my dev friends into 
> users of jscheme [the turning point came due to jscheme's ability to
> easily inspect and modify internal variables which came in real handy 
> while trying to debug live servers where QA had demonstrated elusive 
> bugs.]
Ken is to thank for the nice inspection tools!
If thats a selling point, we might want to develop some more tools in 
that direction ...

Its kind of ironic that a system without much of a debugger (JScheme) 
finds one of its most useful applications
is in debugging!

Maybe its the power that is uncovered by providing the developer with 
direct interactive, scriptable
access to the running program.

>
> 	JScheme's ability to work with java with out any scaffolding [and the 
> dot notation is really helpful] was real handy and also helped in the
> conversions :).
Hmmmm. Jscheme as the anti-IDE?

>
> These are the details of the project that I worked in:
> 	[ Quark Web Application Framework -- It is used as the underlying 
> container for Quark's [http://www.quark.com] enterprise products]
> 	The rest of the products based on QWAF extends the admin interface 
> thru jscheme.
> 		QMP [http://www.quark.com/products/quarkdms/modules/media_portal]
> 		QDM [http://www.quark.com/products/quarkdds/overview_modules.html]
> 			--A kind of proxy for our custom requests built using the same 
> application also uses it quite heavily.

Impressive!  I love seeing Scheme invisibly present in products! (like 
the Lisp purportedly in Orbitz)
The JScheme  zlib/png license certainly helps encourage such uses as it 
places no major restrictions on
its use....

>
> Thanks a lot for jscheme..
Thanks for the feedback...

The JScheme language/implementation benefits greatly when we get 
feedback
from people using JScheme to build real systems. Both Ken and I are 
active JScheme users,
and many of the people on this list are active users as well.  I'd like 
to thank all the people on
this list for their help (and patience) over the years.

---Tim---

>
>
>
> 	~Rahul
> -- blufox.batcave.net
> /*With eyes that speak of the Stars,
> and magick my very soul,
> A Dragon I am Eternal.*/
>
>
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