4 ms·

Scheme has pioneered a lot of stuff over the last 30-40 years that is still fresh for most of the PL world, hygienic macros (like Rust is trying to implement),

Scheme has pioneered a lot of stuff over the last 30-40 years that is still fresh for most of the PL world, hygienic macros (like Rust is trying to implement), delimited continuations (which underlies Java's new virtual threads, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vupFNsND6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vupFNsND6o), efficient closure representations (used all over the place since everybody got lambda fever). Into formal verification? Scheme was there in 1995 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/VLISP%3A-A-verified-implementation-of-Scheme-Guttman-Ramsdell/ac33ecc71cb4d3adf9c5fd2b57cf2425ceded9a0 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/VLISP%3A-A-verified-im... And there is at least half a dozen things in Racket that I wish mainstream languages could get their ass in gear and copy, but no such luck.

bitwize 3y ago
Insert meme of Nolan Grayson, representing Lisp/Scheme/Racket programmers, pointing at fighter jets labeled "transpilers" and saying: "Look at what they need to mimic just a fraction of our power!"
- CyberDildonics 3y ago
  I think the roles would be reversed when trying to make fast, small interactive software that people want to use. "Powerful" is interesting but clear, straightforward and fast is better. No web browser, database, video codec, or high end video game is written in scheme. At best it's inefficient ancillary software that someone wrote in scheme because they wanted to, not because that's what a user wanted.