Re: Scheme acceptance [no flames]

[Matthias Felleisen <matthias@cs.rice.edu>]

Here are a couple of comments from someone who has been with the Scheme
"community" since 1985, though I have to admit that for quite some time
I was so frustrated that I didn't bother to attend any workshops. 

1. I bet you noticed the quotes around community. Someone said that we are
   splintered. That's correct. If we don't watch out, we will reinvent
   nuclear fission :-)

   At the last Scheme workshop in Montreal, I saw some hope during the
   discussion at the end of the day. We may yet see some progess toward 
   a higher degree of community. 

   There may even be a volunteer to drive the IEEE standardization effort. 

2. As the guy who until recently carried PLT, I must also say "who cares."

   We havd and we will build PLT Scheme, which is a derivative and it will
   be one heck of a language. We borrow from Scheme what we can, and that's
   that. In reality, Scheme is a family of languages, and we just to
   exchange ideas with the others.

   Once PLT is truly distributed (and that has been my goal for years), we
   will coordinate and function as the Scheme undergound that others failed
   to establishh. 

3. There are two things that matter to a language: syntax and semantics. 

   a: we could duplicate Java and design a { ; } version of Scheme. Do we
      really want that? Are people really so blind that they don't see how
      XML is a parenthesized syntax and that it's better than { ; -> . * & }

   Suppose we change the syntax. There is the other problem: 

   b: semantics and/or how it affects programming style. Why don't we have
      while for do until repeat loop ... pool out when over thru? Doesn't
      anyone remember the loop wars from the 70s? 

      Scheme's semantics and tail-opt constraint enable us to write code
      that matches data definitions. That matters for program
      maintenance. Why do you think maintenance sucks? Why is it so costly?
      Because they don't have enough looping constructs? Argh ... 

   We want to effect a change of thinking about programming. If we fail
   with that, let others steal our best ideas and let the world go to bits
   and Perl. 

Back to work -- Matthias