Wow @judytuna! It’s been a bit! But of course I remember you well!
Hello! I’m Nathan. I’m learning distributed programming and found Goblins to be a nice accessible tool. Very excited about everything going on here.
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Hello, all. Tony Hursh, a retired programmer and academic.
I’m extremely excited by Hoot, especially now that (very) recent developments give some hope it might work in WebKit-based browsers.
That said, I’m also interested the other work going on here, though I’m not yet familiar enough with it to have a valid opinion. 
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Hey friends! I’m winds0rhum. Staying anon for now because I’m thinking of some uses for Goblins that benefit from anonymity. (Will hopefully expand on that in other threads later.)
I have been involved in various OSS capacities for 20-ish years. Primarily have written in Python and JavaScript in that time, but have also dabbled in Clojure, Rust, Lua, and a few others. I also casually participated in the Secure Scuttlebutt community for a while.
I’m interested in building social things with decentralized and federated tools, in ways that make them accessible on devices of all sizes and speeds, as well as giving people more ownership and control over their social presence, and the moderation and cultural diversity benefits of federation and decentralization.
My hopes and ideas are probably much bigger than my availability and energy, but I figured being here and thinking through ideas in a collaborative space like this might help give me inspiration, and maybe find some collaborators!
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Hello friends, I am Zero. I have written software since I was 11 on a Commodore 64, but started paid work when I was still in high school in 1994.
I have experience with Common Lisp in university but most of this is new to me. I am interested in learning:
- capabilities
- Guix
- GNU Guile
- Emacs
- and Spritely Goblins
My goal is making a distributed MUD out of networked vats that have game items and money balance that can be carried between vats.
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Hello,
I have been a software developer in various forms since the 1980s, mostly doing C/C++ in a regulated industry since 1991 (said regulations having exploded in scope and effect since about 1994…)
Looking back, I feel like I may have a terminal case of ADD, but since the 1980s I have had a lingering fascination with distributed networks of computer servers sharing… data of interest to people.
While the power/capacity/speed of computers has exploded and their size/cost/power requirements have plummeted over the decades, many things have stayed the same: the need for data integrity/security, users’ desires for privacy, anonymity, connectivity and global fame, businesses’ desire to profit, governmental agencies’ desire to snoop…
I have the nagging idea that, if the “infrastructure software” were simple enough to deploy and secure enough to use, thousands to millions of hobbyists around the world not only could, but would maintain the necessary hardware and connectivity to support an ecosystem of fediverse type applications. The problem is: I would estimate “several” developer-years of effort to build such a layer from scratch, and it would need to support a complex, still evolving application layer such as Spritely… and then there’s my ADD.
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Hi,
I’m jdr. I’m not keen on connecting my online identities to my real life ones or each other, but I’m not famous or anything, so you’re not missing out.
I was born too late to hack on really cool computers like the Connection Machine and amazing OSes like Genera so I settled for doing big astrophysics simulations on HPC clusters with Fortran/C and x86 and more recently doing something vague with neural nets through Python (wrapping Fortran and C) and heaps of GPUs. This pays the bills and puts bread on the table, but does not feed the soul.
In my efforts to find some satisfying use for computers I’ve spent time learning weird languages like Idris and Bruijn and whatever they use to configure Nix. I even enjoy tilting at windmills like trying to get modern languages to run the code from SICM.
My current goal is to escape Samsara through Guix and Guile Emacs. One day I hope to purge my life of dark patterns, work for Italian, and win the approval of vrms.
Thanks for reading, I’m looking forward to interacting with you guys.
(I had linked the terms in bold to their relevant English Wikipedia entries, but the when I hit Reply I was told “An error occurred: Sorry you cannot post a link to that host.” though I don’t understand why. I’m sure interested readers can look them up themselves anyway.)
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Hi everyone!
I’m Glenn, a hobbyist and enthusiastic tinkerer with Guile Scheme. I recently discovered Guile-Hoot and Guile-Goblins, and I’m absolutely fascinated by the possibilities they bring to the table. Guile-Hoot has me dreaming of creating fun, interactive applications, while Guile-Goblins sparks all kinds of ideas about building robust, distributed systems with capabilities-based security. It’s like opening the door to a world of creative chaos—and I’m here for it!
Right now, I’m knee-deep in a few projects, including a document-management system. I’m also exploring how I might use Guile-Goblins to experiment with distributed components for knowledge and information sharing or even small personal tools. The idea of secure, decentralized systems powered by Scheme is just too intriguing to resist.
When I’m not tinkering with code, I am an electrical engineer working in Jordan. But Scheme is where I come to relax, learn, and dream up ideas—whether they’re practical, whimsical, or just plain fun.
I’m here to learn from you all, share what I can, and maybe collaborate on something cool. If you’ve got insights, resources, or just want to geek out about Guile-Hoot, Guile-Goblins, or Scheme in general, I’m all ears!
Looking forward to being part of this awesome community.
Cheers,
Glenn
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Hi, I’m Jens (he/him) a hobbyist doing some exploratory coding on a note-taking app on top of goblins.
Just trying to beat the project down in size and stop it changeing too much.
There’s so much that could be done, less that should be done, and far less time to do it.
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Hello friend.
I’m interested in building progressive applications that can run old-school text (BBS-style) interaction patterns as well as rich multimedia experiences, all based on actual user-agents (not owner-agents). OCapN has captured my imagination for something like this.
My languages of choice are Go for getting things done & Rust for doing them the hard way 
I’m considering building an OCapN implementation in Rust to learn the protocol & concepts from the ground up. Yesterday I ported syrup (crates.io: Rust Package Registry) to Rust and I’m considering some async-based netlayers next. I’ve integrated Tor with Rust before and I’m also into Veilid, with which I’ve built a few applications – so these would be likely candidates.
Anyway I’ll probably be asking annoying questions about the protocol and the test suite as I go 
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Hi I’m Théo Tyburn,
I’m a mathematician and a programmer and I find a lot of stuff happening here super cool!
I have a rendering engine project going on, revolving around mathematical visualization and experimental rendering techniques. So of course I’m very excited about Hoot! I already tried Chickadee some years ago but I came back to more portable things at the time. Can’t wait to see Chickadee on Hoot. I’d be interested to discuss any thing related to Hoot’s rendering engine capabilities. Live coding graphics at the REPL is just so satisfying.
I also find the Goblins project very exciting. I don’t know much about distributed programming but you are offering a very inviting playground and I feel empowered to try and build things. I really hope this project goes a long way and that in a near future we’ll see swarm-like peer-to-peer-powered communities dance around the head of the tech giants. We’ll see.
Here are some things I spent my time with recently: I contributed to pyddg, a python library for Mathematical Visualization and Discrete Differential Geometry based on a modern revival of the Erlangen Program. More recently I started getting into Applied Category Theory.
I really like the Guile, Guix and Emacs ecosystems and use them in my daily life. I also like hacking them when I find time but didn’t find time to contribute significantly until now. Would be nice if that changes.
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Hello all, I’m Steven. Professionally I’m a software developer (PHP and Java) and sysadmin in a school. I’m lucky to work with free software there, but not Guile/Spritely (yet?). During summer vacation I have a lot of free time, and I’d like to dedicate some of it to Spritely.
My first baby steps in Lisp were little snippets in Emacs, and I’ve graduated to toddlerhood through the Scheme Primer. I’ve been a longtime follower of Spritely’s development – Christine’s enthusiasm is quite contagious. In autumn '24 I finally dived in with a very simple submission to the Lisp Game Jam: cons-pong, using Hoot. I also experimented with vats and actormaps while solving a puzzle involving a Rubik’s cube.
So I’d like to contribute, but I don’t know where to start. I don’t have a strong preference for any particular part of Spritely, and there’s just so much interesting stuff here! Also, I’m not very good at planning and actually getting started at anything. What really works for me in my experience, is to regularly talk to someone as a kind of sounding board, so I’m not just working entirely on my own. On the other hand it’s a bit weird to ask for a mentor when it’s not clear who I am and what I have to offer. Are the office hours a good place to discuss this? I should be able to make it next week.
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Welcome @stdh! You should come to office hours this week! That would be a good opportunity to have a discussion about onboarding people that want to contribute, like yourself. Hope to see you there!
Thanks, I put it in my agenda. If all goes well: see you Wednesday!
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Hi everyone! I’m Will. I am a UX engineer currently working at Bitwarden. While most of my experience is with web tech, I have recently gotten into Scheme/Guile and found out about this (really cool) project.
While I am still very much a Guile noob, I have been poking around with using it for building user interfaces (with Hoot or GTK). See an early scratchpad implementation of reactive state/signals that I am noodling with here (warning: ugly, broken, AI-assisted; I don’t know what I am doing yet).
All of my excitement revolves around Scheme feeling like the perfect language to describe UI. It is as if JSX were unshackled…
Anyways, I hope to learn more and eventually contribute to the cool mind share going on here. 
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Hi Spritely!
I’m Peter, I met some of you briefly at the last Guix Days and FOSDEM. I loved all of your talks about Spritely and Emacs and all of your wonderful creations.
I work as a mechatronics engineer with scientists at the non-profit Janelia Research Campus building experimental rigs and writing firmware and software for studying brains and cells and computation.
@dthompson didn’t you implement the guix shell command? Would you be interested in helping add a new feature? You would be much better at implementing it than me. Or if you do not have time could you potentially review and double-check some code? I am enthusiastic, but still new to guile scheme.
We have been discussing on the guix-devel mailing list about creating an record to capture the runtime aspects of guix shell that manifests don’t represent: purity, containers/FHS, filesystem view, and environment vars, deliberately excluding build/daemon options (-c, -M, --system, --no-substitutes, etc.). We often create guix containers with a shell script or a Makefile command to set all of the parameters. It would be nice to also have the option of specifying the parameters in a declarative –environment=environment.scm file though or programmatically in code. Ludo seems to like the idea, but it would be nice to discuss it more with anyone who might be interested. Would you be interested or know anyone else who would be? Thanks!
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Welcome @peterpolidoro! I wrote the precursor to guix shell which is the now deprecated guix environment, but it uses a lot of the same code. I don’t know if I can take on a whole new project right now but maybe. At the very least I will be interested in discussing it and following the development.
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Hello, I’m Colorway-Noctowl. I keep it pseudo-anonymous online.
I have an interest in anti-fascist and human-centered technology. I’ve been following @cwebber for a little bit now and am growing more and more interested in the work the Spritely Institute does.
I’ve started playing with Goblins and learning Guile.
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Hello! How are you people?
My name is Wallysson, I’m a Brazilian graduating in Computer Engineering by the Campinas State University, and I’m currently studying Goblins (no project in mind yet).
I currently work with Clojure and have programmed in Lisp since 2019, which was my first language (ELisp, to be more precise).
I ain’t very good with words, so I will stop my presentation here. Ahahaha, thank you all!
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Hi all, my name is Andrew Bramwell (Anaru, Andy or Andi, they/them), I am and ADHD autistic middle-aged New Zealander here for Goblins. My introduction to this community today is by way of reply to @emery
Emery, your link to Genode has awakened a bunch of sleeping potential in my search for a security and privacy-focused events local and wide area network in an environment known for its sometimes-deadly integrity issues. GNU Hurd came into focus, particularly as I had been playing with Racket a bit and have been Guile curious too. Federated social via scuttlebutt exposure about 2011ish got me curious about the side effects/capability’s playground of various languages/ecosystems. Coincidentally Dale Schumacher’s blog “It’s Actors All the Way Down” was a great help in the last third of my trajectory, found while looking into the Erlang ecosystem, ending with looking at a company incorporating Erlang Actor capabilities on SEL4. Which loops back to Genode and thoughts about the stack which a formal proof capability offered by Desyne language runtime (or Unison’s approach if it were more mature), or indeed going the actors using WASM Emery has designed*, with Goblins Vats in WASM instances?
I am here right now because of the volume of valuable YouTube content by @cwebber that has kept intersecting with my journey. It was funny to see the MUD confusion in the chat as I got it straight away!
As for what: my next steps are somewhat frantic as my next booking is the 14th of February 2026 and I’d like to have elements of my earlier-mentioned Genode-based stack playing nice by then on a menagerie of decade-old laptops. I will get a thread going for the curious…
EDIT *should be “shared link to” I apologise to authors
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