[plt-scheme] The perfect teaching language--Is this too much to ask for?

On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 7:00 PM, Shriram Krishnamurthi<sk at cs.brown.edu> wrote:
>> 2. Types in the Language
>
> These are not types.  These are simply inspectors on the run-time
> tags.  Your own example illustrates the point:
>
>>>>> type(isinstance)
>> <type 'builtin_function_or_method'>
>
> The *type* of isinstance would be something like
>
>  isinstance :: value x type -> boolean
>
> [Never mind that type should not be a type.]  In contrast, the
> run-time tag is "some kind of applicable object", and that's what
> Python gives you.

Python builtins are an exception, but usually what you get from type()
is much more than a description: you get the actual class object:

>>> l = [1, 2, 3]
>>> type(l)
<type 'list'>
>>> my_type = type(l)
>>> l2 = my_type()
>>> l2
[]
>>> type(l2)
<type 'list'>
>>>

Is there a Scheme equivalent of this interaction? How is it?

Cheers,

Luciano