
GNU Guile site redesign - trengrj
http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/
======
jeffjose
Nicely done. Interesting how a website design will make people take a second
and consider that's being presented. I remember going to the old website and
immediately dashing out thinking this was something beyond me. The current
design is tasteful, and well executed.

~~~
na85
>well executed

IMHO the execution could be better. Doesn't render properly on my Nexus 5.

~~~
talideon
Compared to what was there before, it's _much_ better.

~~~
sdegutis
Website snapshot from October 13th:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20151013161308/http://www.gnu.org...](http://web.archive.org/web/20151013161308/http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/)

~~~
userbinator
I'm going to disagree with most of the others here and say that I definitely
do prefer the look of the old site. The simple, clear paragraphs of text give
me a feeling of "take your time, relax and learn; there's plenty of
interesting things to read here." In contrast, the new site feels like in-
your-face flashy distracting "TRY OUR AMAZING PRODUCT NOW!!" marketing, which
just evokes a visceral "go away, leave me alone" reaction not unlike that I
experience from seeing ads.

In addition, I had to scroll far more in the new site to read everything than
the old one. For being basically decorative, those pictures are _huge_.

~~~
timtadh
In comparison to the new site the first sentence on the old one throws me off:

    
    
         Guile is the GNU Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for Extensions, the
         official extension language for the GNU operating system. 
    

Oh, so it is a language for writing plugins in. Kinda cool, but Python seems
more newbie friendly than scheme for the same purpose. Might have a niche for
some more scientific applications...

Compared to the new site:

    
    
        Guile is designed to help programmers create flexible applications that can
        be extended by users or other programmers with plug-ins, modules, or
        scripts.
    

That sounds much more general purpose. Maybe you would write the whole
application in guile not just part of it.

~~~
talideon
Exactly.

------
amelius
I have nothing against it per se, but it seems that there is a trend in which
"serious stuff" is graphically designed as if it were meant to be used by only
children. There are many examples. One good example is carbonmade [1] which is
a website to showcase professional portfolios (quite "serious stuff" if you
ask me). I genuinely wonder where that trend is coming from. Is it because the
current generation of engineers grew up watching cartoons? (Just guessing) Or
is it because it is a simple way to make difficult stuff appear more friendly?

Anyway, I like the design, and I think the designers did a good job.

[1] [https://carbonmade.com/](https://carbonmade.com/)

~~~
paroneayea
It's a worthwhile question. I'm a huuuuuuuge supporter of the current design
though! This conversation came up on the guile-devel list, and I gave my
response there too: [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-
devel/2015-09/msg00...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-
devel/2015-09/msg00017.html)

Basically, I think that Lisp and Scheme have a reputation for being
unapproachable. This reputation partly comes from how we structure our
communities, who we reach out to, and etc. But it also depends on how we
message ourselves.

There's a very conscious decision in the new design to make things look
playful and inviting, to encourage experimentation. I think that's super
important. It seems like it's having some effect on encouraging people to
become engaged, and it certainly doesn't seem to be doing any harm to those
who are already into hacking parentheses. :)

~~~
derefr
> Basically, I think that Lisp and Scheme have a reputation for being
> unapproachable.

I don't think Lisp itself has that problem any more. Everyone knows that
Clojure exists and is an approachable Lisp.

The question has now become, "why should I pay attention to any Lisp that's
_not_ Clojure?"

~~~
pjmlp
From the point of view of commercial ones:

\- Compilation to native code AOT

\- Tooling

\- Performance (CL has value types and way better ways to go downlevel, if
needed)

------
bitwize
I love the design. The little kid in the Where the Wild Things Are style gnu
costume gives me a warm, Katamari Damacy type feeling. And that's what Guile
needs, because it's so _comfortable_ to use but there's no marketing
suggesting that it would be better to use than, say, Perl (ugh) or Python
(less ugh, but scoping rules=fail).

Though I do wish they had used the slogan "Guile goes with everything"...

------
tennix
Here are the source code for the new website, and it is written in guile
itself [http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guile/guile-
web.git](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guile/guile-web.git)

------
cabbeer
I love simple, hand drawn images on websites. Something about it makes the
website/service appear much more user friendly. www.dropbox.com/ and
www.basecamp.com/ seem to agree..

------
radarsat1
Whenever I try to get into Scheme, this is one of the things that really
blocks me:

> (use-modules (srfi srfi-19))

How am I supposed to remember what modules contain what utilities, when they
are named like that?

~~~
draven
The list of supported SRFI is here:
[https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/SRFI-
Sup...](https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/SRFI-Support.html)
and the name SRFI means Scheme Request For Implementation, the process of
managing them is explained there: [http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-
process.html](http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-process.html)

------
comex
I like how the download page refuses to mention not only proprietary OSes, but
also Arch (naming Parabola instead), and only grudgingly names Debian.

~~~
paroneayea
A lot of Guix devs use Debian as our host distro. Debian's main website
doesn't mention Arch or Guix either.

~~~
civodul
Another lot of Guix devs use GuixSD, I think. ;-)

------
885895
I agree the site looks nice. One thing though, the cosplay guy in the
illustrations on the page had me immediately thinking of Beastie which I found
surprising seeing as GNU has a bit of a different ideology from BSD. GNU has
long been using a gnu as their mascot so I guess the suit might be supposed to
resemble a gnu calf.

Edit: Specifically I think it is the cover artwork of Kong's 2007 book
_Designing BSD Rootkits_ published by No Starch Press [1] combined with the
FreeBSD logo [2] that caused me to think of Beastie when I visited the new
Guile site.

[1]:
[https://www.nostarch.com/rootkits.htm](https://www.nostarch.com/rootkits.htm)

[2]: [http://www.FreeBSD.org/logo.html](http://www.FreeBSD.org/logo.html)

------
bch
The first little programmer looks more like the BSD mascot (Beastie) [0] than
(presumably their intention) a gnu. Otherwise, a nice site indeed.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_Daemon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_Daemon)

------
jordigh
I wonder if I could convince the one apparently responsible, Luis Felipe López
Acevedo, to make us a better website for GNU Octave too.

~~~
nhf
It wouldn't have the cool art, but it wouldn't be too difficult to produce a
first approximation of a similar website using existing frameworks like
Bootstrap.

------
systems
is guile a general purpose programming language? or is it mainly an extension
language? like lua for example

~~~
zeckalpha
Yes. It can be embedded, however, since it is a Scheme, it is also general
purpose.

------
djblue
I think the consensus is that the site looks great... I have to agree :)

------
mcepl
Nice redesign, just it would be fair to note number of applications who are
locked into Guile and they are desperately trying to get rid of it ;) (I know
for sure GNUCash is in this category).

~~~
davexunit
Why would they be desperately trying to get rid of it? It's immensely good.

------
skybrian
It seems like the link to "for the web" should go somewhere explaining what
web support is built in. (Is it just server-side or is there also JavaScript
compilation?)

------
fphilipe
Great redesign. Too bad they didn't bother with higher resolution images as it
does look quite blurry on a retina screen. At least the logo could be an SVG.

------
johnhattan
Very nicely done. Most of the Gnu pages look like relics from 1995. Hopefully
whoever did that page has plans to reskin the rest of the Gnu pages.

------
Gonzih
As cute as illustrations in "Schemer" book series. Love it.

------
riffraff
this is a fantastic design.

