Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!EU.net!news2.EUnet.fr!news.fnet.fr!ilog!news
From: davis@ilog.fr (Harley Davis)
Subject: Re: Unix Weenies (formerly: Removing READ)
In-Reply-To: jbotz@mtholyoke.edu's message of 1 Mar 1995 01:41:30 GMT
Message-ID: <DAVIS.95Mar2100509@passy.ilog.fr>
Lines: 47
Sender: news@ilog.fr
Nntp-Posting-Host: passy
Organization: Ilog SA, Gentilly, France
References: <SCHWARTZ.95Feb27183623@galapagos.cse.psu.edu>
	<28Feb1995.095828.Alan@LCS.MIT.EDU> <hbaker-2802950920590001@192.0.2.1>
	<3j0jca$ebg@mudraker.mtholyoke.edu>
Date: 02 Mar 1995 09:05:09 GMT


In article <3j0jca$ebg@mudraker.mtholyoke.edu> jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz) writes:

   In article <hbaker-2802950920590001@192.0.2.1>,
   Henry Baker <hbaker@netcom.com> wrote:
   >I don't know if that was their intent, but my understanding of the Scheme
   >community is that they wanted to clean up existing Lisp semantics.  Such
   >a cleanup job doesn't necessarily introduce new features, but refines the
   >ones that are already there.

   Scheme is not a "cleaned-up Lisp".  It's really a different language
   with a similar syntax and which shares some of the same building blocks
   (lists, S-exps).

What is this mythical Lisp to which you refer?

   >One look at the Common Lisp book (god forbid that you accidently drop
   >the book on your foot) indicates that such cleanup is long overdue.
   >Thus, Scheme (and the ANSI Lisp standardization effort) has
   >essentially been a backward looking project.

   You have it completely bass-ackwards.  Scheme came before Common Lisp.
   Common Lisp was an attempt to create a unified Lisp that borrowed some
   of Scheme's advances over Lisp (like static scoping).  Scheme was a
   very forward-looking project that introduced some pretty novel ideas
   (closures, continuations) which to this day are found in few other
   languages.  At the time of its inception Scheme was a far more powerful
   language than any Lisp, and in many ways it still is.  The fact that
   Scheme is a small language is just the icing on the cake and in no way
   detracts from that claim.

Where is Scheme's powerful and advanced object and module systems?

Scheme is a great language, but it's not exactly the be-all and
end-all of the Lisp family.  Lots of things have happened since it was
invented.

-- Harley Davis
-- 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harley Davis                            net: davis@ilog.fr
ILOG S.A.                               tel: +33 1 46 63 66 66
2 Avenue Gallini, BP 85                fax: +33 1 46 63 15 82
94253 Gentilly Cedex, France            url: http://www.ilog.com/

           Ilog Talk information: info@ilog.com
