The single namespace is quite useful, and if you think the macros are weak then you've only been looking at R5RS and not at real implementations: implicit renam

The single namespace is quite useful, and if you think the macros are weak then you've only been looking at R5RS and not at real implementations: implicit rename, explicit rename, syntactic closures, and syntax-case are all as powerful as CL macros, and a good deal safer (although implicit rename is kind of expensive, and explicit rename requires explicit safety, so syntactic closures or syntax-case are the ways to go) Call/cc can indeed be useful in real software, although it's uncommon. However, teaching is part of Scheme's domain, so it's still a good thing either way. If you have an especially fast implementation of call/cc (like Chicken), you can use it to implement delimited continuations, which are safer, and can express common uses of call/cc far more elegantly. Racket (it should be noted that Racket isn't a scheme, but it's close enough that it's kind of "in the family" as it were) and Guile (which IS a scheme) have these as part of the core language.