3 ms·
Let's see if I have this right. I could be wrong about the details here: Before it was called "Scheme," Sussman was writing papers about a lisp subset that co
by hapless 15y ago
Let's see if I have this right. I could be wrong about the details here:
Before it was called "Scheme," Sussman was writing papers about a lisp subset that could be optimized. Some folks tried to write an optimizing compiler, known as "T."
http://mumble.net/~jar/tproject/ http://mumble.net/~jar/tproject/
Common Lisp was a superset of a bunch of vendor Lisp systems, even more monstrously complex than any individual vendor Lisp.
So if I follow the author: If a CL implementation was indeed faster and better-optimized than the simpler Scheme dialect, then what was the purpose of Scheme?
- groovy2shoes 15y agoThe initial purpose of Scheme was to implement Hewitt's Actor model in Lisp. Steele and Sussman realized that "actors" were the same as lexical closures [1]. The Lambda Papers [2] describe the early implementation details of Scheme, and it was these papers that influenced the development of T [3]. [1] "The History of Scheme" http://labs.oracle.com/projects/plrg/JAOO-SchemeHistory-2006public.pdf http://labs.oracle.com/projects/plrg/JAOO-SchemeHistory-2006... [2] "The Lambda Papers" http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html [3] "History of T" http://www.paulgraham.com/thist.html http://www.paulgraham.com/thist.html