[plt-scheme] Scheme Steering Committee Position Statement

From: David Van Horn (dvanhorn at ccs.neu.edu)
Date: Fri Aug 21 14:17:03 EDT 2009

Sam TH wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 12:18 PM, Eduardo Bellani<ebellani at gmail.com> wrote:
>> http://scheme-reports.org/2009/position-statement.html
>>
>> Any comments?
> 
> I'm disappointed that people think that a Scheme that works well for
> education and research can't be the same as one that works well for
> writing large-scale programs.  I think the existence of PLT Scheme, in
> which large quantities of all three are done, is an existence proof of
> the opposite.

Agreed.

I also think the large v. small language is a false dichotomy.  If you 
want to write a module (library) using nothing but lambda and apply, you 
can do that in R6RS.  If you want all the bells and whistles, you can do 
that too.  We should (and PLT does) focus on enabling this sort of 
thing.  Rather than focus on a small and large instantiation of 
"Scheme", we should work on the boundaries between languages, small and 
large, safe and unsafe, typed and untyped, sane and crazy, etc.

David




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