[plt-scheme] PLT Scheme saves the day

Yeap, MIT hires their own, and it shows :-)


On Oct 26, 2009, at 9:59 PM, Neil Van Dyke wrote:

> PLT Scheme recently helped save a presentation at an ACM workshop.
>
> We needed a demonstration of our system that could be run on a two- 
> laptop LAN during the presentation.  Whether the existing Java  
> server part of the system could be adapted rapidly enough for this  
> purpose, or would even run well on a Windows laptop, was  
> questionable.  I'd never used the PLT Web Server before, but I found  
> that I was able to use the stateful servlets to reimplement the  
> pertinent functionality of the server much more quickly than I  
> believe that the existing Java code could have been adapted.  After  
> we ran into some snags elsewhere, the time savings on the server  
> seemed to make the difference between having a demo/video in time  
> and having only slides.
>
> I have impressed this fact upon my colleagues, who mostly remember  
> Scheme from SICP problem sets, and who were not aware what a nice  
> R&D platform PLT Scheme now is.  One of my colleagues was also  
> impressed by how PLT has been able to get research products out and  
> used in practice, contrasted with the not-uncommon situation of good  
> systems research disappearing because it's not accessible.
>
> Now, if they'd only let me replace all this Java and C++ code, we'd  
> finish the rest of the project in half the time. :)
>
> Neil Van Dyke
> Research Scientist
> MIT CSAIL
>
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