[plt-scheme] PLT vs. the world

Hi,

On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 5:46 PM, i j <laplacian42 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm brand new to Scheme.

Welcome!

> Can you please tell me what the PLT story is?

PLT Scheme has great documentation, libraries, community, people, and
implementation (with many great languages).

> My impression so far is that PLT consists of a group of motivated
> individuals

Virtually all academics.

> who want to use Scheme as a productive general purpose
> language, and so a number of features have been added to facilitate
> that.

Yes, and, for teaching and research.

> It seems to me that a large portion of the Scheme community thinks
> that's great, and another large portion is apalled at the rash and
> gratuitous extensions to the basic Scheme language. :)

Do you like chocolate or vanilla?

Every community seems to need bogeyman and that of Scheme is no exception.

> When the subject came up on Reddit, one commenter suggested that PLTers are
> very strong marketers of their approach.

We are all marketers of our preferred approach :).

> Others suggested that R6RS was basically a product of PLT.

R6RS is a product of the committee. See: http://www.r6rs.org/

> Does PLT support the SRFI's (which I'm just learning about) or does
> PLT go off in its own direction?

Support support support.

> Also, is there a PLT-specific faq or community-edited wiki anywhere
> where I might find these questions answered? I see that PLT has
> substantial docs, but did not find a link to a FAQ or wiki.

This list is the best place.

Best wishes,

Grant