From 19ed330f5067a393839d983252d4a8799e296ad2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Ekaitz Zarraga Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2020 16:59:13 +0200 Subject: Update contents --- content/donations/01-Gnu-Guix.md | 2 +- content/donations/02-Chibi-Scheme.md | 130 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 131 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) create mode 100644 content/donations/02-Chibi-Scheme.md (limited to 'content/donations') diff --git a/content/donations/01-Gnu-Guix.md b/content/donations/01-Gnu-Guix.md index d9c4e0a..8624edd 100644 --- a/content/donations/01-Gnu-Guix.md +++ b/content/donations/01-Gnu-Guix.md @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ Lang: en Summary: Recent ElenQ Technology donation to the great GNU Guix package manager and software distribution -> Read all the posts about [ElenQ Donations here]({tag}donations). +> Read all the posts about [ElenQ Donations here]({tag}elenq-donations). I consider my work part of my responsibility to make this world a better place so since the early beginning of the company I decided to donate as much as I diff --git a/content/donations/02-Chibi-Scheme.md b/content/donations/02-Chibi-Scheme.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..501fa1e --- /dev/null +++ b/content/donations/02-Chibi-Scheme.md @@ -0,0 +1,130 @@ +Title: ElenQ Donations — Chibi Scheme +Date: 2020-05-31 +Categories: Series +Tags: ElenQ Donations +Slug: donations-chibi-02 +Lang: en +Summary: Donation to Chibi Scheme programming language + +> Read all the posts about [ElenQ Donations here]({tag}elenq-donations). + +In a previous post I already talked about why I consider important to donate +money or time to Free Software projects. + +This time I want to talk about my recent contributions to Chibi Scheme's +standard library. + +Chibi Scheme is a R7RS scheme implementation that was designed to work as an +extension or scripting language. It's just a small library you can embed. +That's similar to Lua, but with *a lot* of parenthesis[^1]. + +For those that are not familiar with Scheme: it's just a programming language +you should read about. You'll probably discover all those new cool things you +have in your programming language of choice are not that new[^2]. + +There's a detail I'd like to talk about, though. Contrary to other programming +language definitions or standards, Scheme's R7RS report is something you can +read yourself. It's less than 100 pages long[^3]. + +If you combine that with the design decisions that Alex Shinn (who also took +part on the R7RS definition) took on Chibi Scheme, you end up with a *simple* +programming language you can actually read. + +That's important. + +You might wonder why should you care about the readability of a programming +language if you are just a user. The answer is simple too: free software relies +in the fact that you can audit and improve or customize it. If you are not able +to read it you can't exercise your rights by yourself and you'll always need to +rely in someone else. That's not intrinsically bad, that's the only solution +that non-programmer users have. Programmers need to trust other people in other +things as well so that's not a major issue. + +Problems come when projects get so complicated —and I mean +millions-of-lines-of-code complicated here— only large companies have enough +resources to tackle the task of editing the code. In those cases, software is +not really free anymore, because *in practice* you are unable to use your +rights and you can't afford to find someone else to do it for you. + +We started to get used to that, though. + +Something I learned as a sculptor is the tools that fit you better are those +that you made, you hacked or you get used to. As programmers, we are supposed +to know how to program, so we are supposed to be able to make and hack the +tools but we are deciding to get used to the ones that others built. + +The first step to control your workspace, and consequently your own job is to +control your tools[^4]. + +I'd love to say those are the reasons why I use Chibi Scheme, but that's not +*totally* true. I don't know why I use it. I just *like it*. + +Anyway, the other day I realized Chibi Scheme's JSON parser was unable to parse +Spanish accents so I was unable to control [ElenQ +Publishing's](http://en.goteo.org/project/elenq-publishing) book's metadata +correctly. That's a problem. + +As the language is simple, I was able to read the standard library and propose +a change that would let the JSON parser use UTF-8 characters. + + + +During the process I checked [CPython's JSON parser +implementation](https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/master/Lib/json/decoder.py#L117) +and I realized I could do it better adding surrogate pair support. So I decided +to add it too. + + + +Once my changes were merged, I realized it was a good idea to keep going and +add a JSON encoder, that wasn't developed yet. So I did. + + + +While I was testing my JSON encoder I realized there was an issue with floating +point numbers in the JSON parser. So I fixed that too. + + + +I also fixed some random indentation issue I found: + + + +I didn't really need to do all what I did, but I did it anyway. I just wanted +to keep Chibi Scheme healthy while I was opening the door to some future +contributions. Now I have a little bit more control on my tooling, and I feel +more comfortable with the fact that I might need to make some changes on +Chibi's code in the future. + +It doesn't need to be perfect, neither. I'm sure it isn't, because I didn't +write C code since I was at university and I had zero experience working on +Chibi-Scheme's internals. My code was just enough to make the features happen, +now with Alex's changes the code is running fine and **everyone** can benefit +from this. + +So, the message I take from this can be summarized in these points: + +- Use tools you can read and edit like Chibi Scheme or even CPython, which is a + large codebase but is surprisingly easy to read. +- Programming languages (or their stdlib) should never be considered something + untouchable. Touch them, change them, make them fit your needs. +- Don't be afraid of tackling something that may seem hard on the first look. +- You don't have to be perfect. +- Spend time and energy on stuff that matters. + +Hope all this —the post and the code— is useful. + +Being useful is the greatest goal of an engineer, after all. + +Take care. + +[^1]: And no `end`-s. Less typing for sure: good for your hands. + +[^2]: And maybe not that cool neither. + +[^3]: I'm not going to talk about the implications of that fact. It's obvious + there must be some kind of trade-off comparing to other standards that are + more than one thousand pages long. I'll just recommend you to read it, it's + pretty good: + +[^4]: In fact, that's the second. I'm supposing we all know what we are doing. -- cgit v1.2.3