Splitting the Scheme language
Aug. 24th, 2009 01:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurThanks to LtU for the pointer to this interesting post from the Scheme Steering Committee.
Summary: the Scheme community is starting to realize that you can't really have it both ways -- a truly focused teaching language isn't going to have the bells and whistles demanded by real-world programming, and a "real" programming language is going to be full of fat that just gets in the way of research and teaching. So they're trying to move in the direction of splitting Scheme into two compatible dialects, a "small" language oriented towards the research and teaching side, and a "large" language that is intended for practical day-to-day programming. A specific agenda here is to incorporate enough into the "large" language that people stop needing to use enhanced dialects whenever they want to actually *use* Scheme for development.
Overall, sounds sensible to me. I don't know whether they'll be able to get enough community support and momentum to pull this off (and to head off the inevitable friction and religious wars), but it's a very practical approach to resolving the tensions within the community...
Summary: the Scheme community is starting to realize that you can't really have it both ways -- a truly focused teaching language isn't going to have the bells and whistles demanded by real-world programming, and a "real" programming language is going to be full of fat that just gets in the way of research and teaching. So they're trying to move in the direction of splitting Scheme into two compatible dialects, a "small" language oriented towards the research and teaching side, and a "large" language that is intended for practical day-to-day programming. A specific agenda here is to incorporate enough into the "large" language that people stop needing to use enhanced dialects whenever they want to actually *use* Scheme for development.
Overall, sounds sensible to me. I don't know whether they'll be able to get enough community support and momentum to pull this off (and to head off the inevitable friction and religious wars), but it's a very practical approach to resolving the tensions within the community...