4 ms·

Scheme is a neat little language, but it's really not ideal for writing full software systems. Indeed, Guile & Racket (back when it was PLT Scheme) are perfect

by zeveb 8y ago

Scheme is a neat little language, but it's really not ideal for writing full software systems. Indeed, Guile & Racket (back when it was PLT Scheme) are perfect exemplars of Greenspun's Tenth Rule: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. E.g. GOOPS is similar to CLOS, but missing a bit and unsupported other than in Guile. Meanwhile, implementations like SBCL are free, compile to machine code and are competitive on some benchmarks with C/C++. Common Lisp — while it does have some warts — is intended for building long-lived, durable, full-featured systems. It's a really good language, and it standardises quite a lot. Often, what look like warts are actually useful features in large systems. It really saddens me that so much effort has been expended trying to make Scheme a reasonable language for large systems, when there already exists one which is. That doesn't even get to the bits of Scheme which I believe are mistakes (e.g. a single namespace, making NIL, () & #f different).

bjoli 8y ago
I find many common lisp users' attitude towards scheme condescending. It is as if we are completely oblivious to the CL ecosystem or outright stupid to prefer something else. I assure you, we look in envy at CL and what a standardised module system, portable networking and CFFI achieves. However, we still prefer scheme. Some of us actually like a single namespace, and don't mind the difference between false and nil (I have never really met a case where that distinction mattered much).
- zeveb 8y ago
  > I find many common lisp users' attitude towards scheme condescending. Are you familiar with the Blub Paradox[0]? I contend that the things you dislike about Common Lisp or don't mind about Scheme having or not having are precisely the things which make Lisp better for real-world systems. My opinion — a professional, educated & considered opinion, but an opinion nonetheless — is that Scheme is simply not suitable for large-systems work, and that all attempts to take a Scheme core and make it suitable founder on the shoals of Greenspun's Tenth. The Scheme maintainers agree, because in R6RS they tried to build a more capable language. The Scheme community agrees, because it rebelled against R5RS, deeming a more capable Scheme an un-Scheme-like Scheme. I like Scheme. It's a pretty, elegant language, with an exciting model. But the language as it exists simply isn't ready for systems work, and (due to its underlying philosophy) probably never will be. That's not a bad thing. Scheme is great for what it is. It's great for teaching; great for reasoning about computation; great for learning evaluators & compilers. But it isn't great for building systems like an OS, emacs, a distribution, a package manager, an init system or a window manager — and the effort spent working on making its inadequacies tolerable could instead be spent on implementing features in a more-than-adequate language. Also, Lisp doesn't have portable networking. That's one of its warts (I did say it has them — and plenty of them! Lisp is not perfect!). It does have portable streams (and I think all implementations make sockets available as streams), but Scheme's ports are analogous. Neither is CFFI standarised. 0: http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html
  - rufugee 8y ago
    Can you explain why it's not ready systems work?
  - bjoli 8y ago
    I have written applications weighing in at about 10k lines of code (not huge, but big enough to have to manage some complexity) using LispWorks. I doubt I would have problems writing the same software in guile. I don't really understand which inadequacies you mean. The only thing I really miss is conditions and restarts (which is a pretty big downside) and how integrated CLOS is (and the fact that LW pre-populates the CLOS caches is pretty neat!)
  - davexunit 8y ago
    >But the language as it exists simply isn't ready for systems work, and (due to its underlying philosophy) probably never will be. One of the flaws with this argument is insisting that comparisons be made between CL and standard Scheme. No one uses strictly standard Scheme. It's better to think of Scheme as a family of loosely connected languages. I know that both Guile and Racket are languages (and they are their own unique languages) capable of serious systems work. CL is great, too, but I don't know why you keep insisting that it's the only lisp worth using. The Guix developers have shown that Guile can be used successfully for the initial RAM disk, init system, package manager, configuration management system, continuous integration system, web site generator, etc.

by zeveb 8y ago

bjoli 8y ago

I find many common lisp users' attitude towards scheme condescending. It is as if we are completely oblivious to the CL ecosystem or outright stupid to prefer something else. I assure you, we look in envy at CL and what a standardised module system, portable networking and CFFI achieves. However, we still prefer scheme. Some of us actually like a single namespace, and don't mind the difference between false and nil (I have never really met a case where that distinction mattered much).

zeveb 8y ago
> I find many common lisp users' attitude towards scheme condescending. Are you familiar with the Blub Paradox[0]? I contend that the things you dislike about Common Lisp or don't mind about Scheme having or not having are precisely the things which make Lisp better for real-world systems. My opinion — a professional, educated & considered opinion, but an opinion nonetheless — is that Scheme is simply not suitable for large-systems work, and that all attempts to take a Scheme core and make it suitable founder on the shoals of Greenspun's Tenth. The Scheme maintainers agree, because in R6RS they tried to build a more capable language. The Scheme community agrees, because it rebelled against R5RS, deeming a more capable Scheme an un-Scheme-like Scheme. I like Scheme. It's a pretty, elegant language, with an exciting model. But the language as it exists simply isn't ready for systems work, and (due to its underlying philosophy) probably never will be. That's not a bad thing. Scheme is great for what it is. It's great for teaching; great for reasoning about computation; great for learning evaluators & compilers. But it isn't great for building systems like an OS, emacs, a distribution, a package manager, an init system or a window manager — and the effort spent working on making its inadequacies tolerable could instead be spent on implementing features in a more-than-adequate language. Also, Lisp doesn't have portable networking. That's one of its warts (I did say it has them — and plenty of them! Lisp is not perfect!). It does have portable streams (and I think all implementations make sockets available as streams), but Scheme's ports are analogous. Neither is CFFI standarised. 0: http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html
- rufugee 8y ago
  Can you explain why it's not ready systems work?
- bjoli 8y ago
  I have written applications weighing in at about 10k lines of code (not huge, but big enough to have to manage some complexity) using LispWorks. I doubt I would have problems writing the same software in guile. I don't really understand which inadequacies you mean. The only thing I really miss is conditions and restarts (which is a pretty big downside) and how integrated CLOS is (and the fact that LW pre-populates the CLOS caches is pretty neat!)
- davexunit 8y ago
  >But the language as it exists simply isn't ready for systems work, and (due to its underlying philosophy) probably never will be. One of the flaws with this argument is insisting that comparisons be made between CL and standard Scheme. No one uses strictly standard Scheme. It's better to think of Scheme as a family of loosely connected languages. I know that both Guile and Racket are languages (and they are their own unique languages) capable of serious systems work. CL is great, too, but I don't know why you keep insisting that it's the only lisp worth using. The Guix developers have shown that Guile can be used successfully for the initial RAM disk, init system, package manager, configuration management system, continuous integration system, web site generator, etc.