[plt-scheme] Re: Is R6RS useless for PLT?

Hi,

On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:54:16 +0200
kbohdan at mail.ru wrote:

> As a good example of the language without single dominating
> implementation but with excellent dominating community i recommend to
> look at: c++ & www.boost.org. To put your library inside one must
> satisfy a lot of requirements. The most useful libraries from *boost*
> project will become a part of a new standard. When/If PLT switched to
> r6rs, wouldn't it be perfect to have similar library adoption process
> for r6rs PLT libs ?

I don't think that taking extensions from PLT or other implementations
and declaring them a standard will work. C++ is not a language known
for its elegance but Scheme (at least R5RS-Scheme) is. Sure, I'm all
for making Scheme a more practical language but then, I wouldn't want
Scheme to become an cleaned-up clone of Common Lisp. CL has its use,
Scheme does too and shouldn't be a Lisp-1 version of CL.

A bit of history: Macros are maybe the most dominant, well-known
feature of Lisp and therefore Scheme. You might be surprised, like me,
to hear that macros weren't standardized in the RnRS until macros
became mandatory in some version (I don't remember the exact version,
but when "Scheme and the Art of programming" was printed in the
nineties, it wasn't).

regards,
Marek