[plt-scheme] Re: Change the World

On Mon, 2005-03-21 at 10:14 -0500, Geoffrey Knauth wrote:

> I'm trying to guess what makes it hard for Scheme to "catch on" in the 
> mainstream.

My pet theory is that it's very difficult to learn functional
programming alone, on your own. You have to go to class and get it
taught to you. Or you have to have a friend teaching it to you.
Functional programming is greater than the sum of its parts. So, without
someone to show you how the parts add up, it's difficult to get it on
your own. 

With the current state of things, we don't have critical mass of
functional programmers to overtake the inflow of self-taught imperative
programmers. 


Also, there is the R6RS problem. The Scheme community is so fragmented!
Any pair of two Scheme coders have to overcome large differences in
coding style just to be able to share code. And gratuitous usages of
macros are not helping.

For all its flaws, this is in fact Python's best feature. The coding
style is well defined and well followed.

-- Guillaume (via proxy)