5 ms·

I seldom saw such an incredibly weak argumentation as in section "The number argument". Yes, If someone wants Scheme to remain an academic toy language, this mi

I seldom saw such an incredibly weak argumentation as in section "The number argument". Yes, If someone wants Scheme to remain an academic toy language, this might make sense. I followed the discussion and schisma which resulted in Racket for good. If you want to have a sane language, some pages of specification and rationalization are required, as has been done for R6RS. If the professors fear that students will no longer be able to implement their Scheme interpreter in a term because the spec has become to complicated please call the language somehow different and stop to encumber the development of an otherwise great language!

QuesnayJr 7y ago
There is definitely a split between the people who think it's interesting to program in Scheme and the people who think it's interesting to program <i>a</i> Scheme (particularly to do so in Scheme itself). For the second group, the Scheme language is more of an aesthetic object than a programming language. The length argument is also a stand-in for the argument about Common Lisp versus Scheme. CL is pretty carefully defined, so the CL spec is pretty long, and some Schemers used this as an argument against CL (that it was bloated). Now suddenly the Scheme spec was also long, so that argument was gone.
eadmund 7y ago
It really all depends on what one wants. If one wants an excellent academic exercise, Scheme is pretty great. If one wants an excellent industrial language, Common Lisp is right there. I am sympathetic to R6RS because it tries to make Scheme more useful for real programming — but in that case why not just use Common Lisp, which is even more useful for that purpose?
- codeflo 7y ago
  I’m not convinced CL is more useful for real world usage. People sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that more features are always better. With programming languages, that’s rarely true, because even features you don’t use cost you something — in terms of training new programmers, and every time your dealing with other people’s code. (And note here that in real-world projects, most of the code you have to modify and debug isn’t yours!) Of course it’s possible to go too far the other way, and R5RS leaves too many questions unanswered. But in my opinion, simplicity is also an important feature, not just academically, but in practice.
  - lispm 7y ago
    Since one doesn't program in R5RS (a language definition document), but with real implementations, those tend to add quite a bit to Scheme to make practical programming possible. Example: https://www.gnu.org/software/mit-scheme/documentation/mit-scheme-ref/index.html https://www.gnu.org/software/mit-scheme/documentation/mit-sc...
    - codeflo 7y ago
      Sure, but the point of a standard is usually to make implementations interchangeable.

QuesnayJr 7y ago

There is definitely a split between the people who think it's interesting to program in Scheme and the people who think it's interesting to program <i>a</i> Scheme (particularly to do so in Scheme itself). For the second group, the Scheme language is more of an aesthetic object than a programming language. The length argument is also a stand-in for the argument about Common Lisp versus Scheme. CL is pretty carefully defined, so the CL spec is pretty long, and some Schemers used this as an argument against CL (that it was bloated). Now suddenly the Scheme spec was also long, so that argument was gone.

eadmund 7y ago

It really all depends on what one wants. If one wants an excellent academic exercise, Scheme is pretty great. If one wants an excellent industrial language, Common Lisp is right there. I am sympathetic to R6RS because it tries to make Scheme more useful for real programming — but in that case why not just use Common Lisp, which is even more useful for that purpose?

codeflo 7y ago
I’m not convinced CL is more useful for real world usage. People sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that more features are always better. With programming languages, that’s rarely true, because even features you don’t use cost you something — in terms of training new programmers, and every time your dealing with other people’s code. (And note here that in real-world projects, most of the code you have to modify and debug isn’t yours!) Of course it’s possible to go too far the other way, and R5RS leaves too many questions unanswered. But in my opinion, simplicity is also an important feature, not just academically, but in practice.
- lispm 7y ago
  Since one doesn't program in R5RS (a language definition document), but with real implementations, those tend to add quite a bit to Scheme to make practical programming possible. Example: https://www.gnu.org/software/mit-scheme/documentation/mit-scheme-ref/index.html https://www.gnu.org/software/mit-scheme/documentation/mit-sc...
  - codeflo 7y ago
    Sure, but the point of a standard is usually to make implementations interchangeable.