...is finally out! Publicity follows:
- http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/GNU-Guile-2.0-Now-Ready-for-Public-Consumption
- http://lwn.net/Articles/428288/
- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2225989
- http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/fmm7v/guile_20_gnus_official_extension_language_finally/
- http://wingolog.org/archives/2011/02/16/guile-is-out
And we got a link on the GNU Project home page!
Ludovic Courtès, who actually assembled the release, notes in the release docs that 2.0's been in the works for three years. I could've sworn it was longer than that, maybe because the impetus for the changes in this release has been building for quite some time. I've been working on Guile (and whining about it, and more often than not sitting back and watching other people do brilliant things in it), at various rates of productivity, since I left school eight (!) years ago, and consequently I've been able to watch it as it transformed from a project that was more or less in a holding pattern into one that's rapidly improving and incorporating modern language features without compromising the level of stability it's known for.
Even though I came to it because of its designation as the "official" GNU extension language, I've always liked Guile -- I've found it to be more accessible than other Scheme platforms for both the embedded and interactive use cases -- but I'm aware that some people hold a negative opinion of it. Whatever your past experience with Guile, I think it's changed enough with this release that it's strongly worth another look. The pain points have been addressed head-on, and the good parts have gotten even better. Look at that feature set and tell me you don't start imagining applications.
Many, many thanks to Ludovic and to Andy Wingo, who tackled the hardest problems and accomplished some unbelievable things.