[plt-scheme] Please share your comments on the pros and cons of mzscheme + EMACS

On Jun 7, 2007, at 9:51 PM, Robert Nikander wrote:

> is there keyboard command to send selected code to the REPL?


Dan (Friedman) has been hacking Scheme and Lisp code in Emacs for,  
oh, well a long time. We had a 60th birthday Fest a couple of years  
ago. His door label used to say Friedman, Lispman. He and I  
programmed a lot together when we wrote The Little LISPer and the  
other little books. It was all done in Emacs. Once we moved to higher- 
order functions (Y, cps, The Seasoned Schemer) you cannot imagine how  
often we hit the closure-problem because we hit meta-x or escape- 
control-x (yes, key strokes are burned into your brain as Richard said).

Eventually we agreed to always re-start the Scheme buffer and re-load  
the code for the entire book from scratch. Even though that would  
take several minutes on the old Sun 3-60s and friends, we noticed  
that we were faster because we always ran the tests and we didn't  
fight those stupid closure bugs anymore.

Escape-control-x is for very small programs and macho, heroic young  
programmers who have time to waste (including on IRC channels). Real  
programmers use transparent REPLs.

-- Matthias, whose remarks are not addressed to anyone personally but  
who doesn't mind sharing history or his stories