scripting language vs. developer community size

[Christopher Browne]

On Tue, 16 Jan 2001 10:00:05 CST, the world broke into rejoicing as
grib@gnumatic.com (Bill Gribble)  said:
> 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).

One of the _unfortunate_ things about Scheme is that in order to
make it into an environment of comparable functionality to Common Lisp,
you need to add so much stuff that it pretty much gets _larger_ than
Common Lisp.

Case in point:  The CLISP stuff in /usr/bin/clisp amounts to about 5MB
of code.  And that provides pretty much all the stuff described in
CLTL2, save for the SERIES stuff in the back.  Guile is a _bit_ smaller,
but lacks CLOS [at this point], a full byte-compiler, and the _extensive_
sets of functions that come "standard" in CL.

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

A wonderful book, but while it's mindstretching, and pretty inherently
Scheme-oriented, there needs to be two caveats:
  a) It's _not_ a text on Scheme; it does _not_ cover the complete
     language.
  b) The purpose of it is to teach computer science, which is not
     relevant to everyones' purpose.

The world "could use" something akin to Graham's "On Lisp" that was,
instead, "On Scheme."  Kent Dybvig's book on ANSI Scheme, which also
happens to be available on the web, seems to me to be about the best
text on the language.

"The world needs" a book on Scheme that would fit into some combination
of the O'Reilly or Wrox publishing lineups that seem oriented towards
a combination of "sound-but-practical."
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "gro.mca@" "enworbbc"))
<http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/>
Rules of the Evil Overlord #199. "I will not make alliances with those
more powerful than myself. Such a person would only double-cross me in
my moment  of glory.  I will make  alliances with those  less powerful
than myself. I will then  double-cross them in their moment of glory."
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