scripting language vs. developer community size

[Bill Gribble]

On Mon, Jan 15, 2001 at 07:05:40PM -0500, Eugene Tyurin wrote:
> Many  years ago  (circa 1988)  I  remember briefly  trying out  some
> package called  Texas Instruments' Scheme.   Back then I  thought it
> looked like  a dialect of Lisp  with some additional system  and GUI
> toolkits.
> 
> Is that "The Scheme" we're talking about?

Scheme is an old language.  It predates Common LISP significantly and
was one of the early "family" of LISP languages.

One of the most beautiful things about Scheme (in my book) is the fact
that the definitive reference to the language, "Revised^5 Report on
the Algorithmic Language Scheme" (R5RS), is shorter than the *index*
to the definitive reference to Common LISP, "Common LISP: The Language
(2nd ed)" (CLTL2).

Also, one of the best computer science textbooks ever written,
"Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" by Abelson and
Sussman, is written around Scheme.

b.g.