Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
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From: davis@ilog.fr (Harley Davis)
Subject: Re: Unix Weenies (formerly: Removing READ)
In-Reply-To: jbotz@mtholyoke.edu's message of 3 Mar 1995 12:58:09 GMT
Message-ID: <DAVIS.95Mar3161827@passy.ilog.fr>
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References: <SCHWARTZ.95Feb27183623@galapagos.cse.psu.edu>
	<hbaker-2802950920590001@192.0.2.1> <3j0jca$ebg@mudraker.mtholyoke.edu>
	<DAVIS.95Mar2100509@passy.ilog.fr> <3j73p1$6fu@mudraker.mtholyoke.edu>
Date: 03 Mar 1995 15:18:27 GMT


In article <3j73p1$6fu@mudraker.mtholyoke.edu> jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz) writes:

   In article <DAVIS.95Mar2100509@passy.ilog.fr>,
   Harley Davis <davis@ilog.fr> wrote:
   >Where is Scheme's powerful and advanced object and module systems?

   Which one of the dozens would you like?  ;-) Seriously, I wouldn't
   claim that Scheme is the be-all and end-all, but people have a
   tendency to confuse "feature-rich" with "powerful".  Scheme is a small
   language, meaning that you have to implement a lot of features
   yourself if you want them.  Scheme is a powerful language, meaning
   that you can.

I don't think that the creation of new basic datatypes and a practical
way to control program interfaces would be considered unreasonably
"featureful" by most programmers.  For instance, I would say that
Modula-3 showed a great deal of restraint in selecting features, yet
its designers chose to include these mechanisms.

Indeed, I suspect the root problem is, again, the lack of a division
between the language and its libraries.  Scheme the language could be
even smaller than the current Scheme, even with some additional
features; while the libraries could really be of almost any size.

-- Harley Davis
-- 

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