[plt-scheme] International Summer School on Advances in Programming Languages (precedes ICFP'09)

On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 11:34 AM, Shriram Krishnamurthi <sk at cs.brown.edu> wrote:
> Why do you bother sending this to the plt-scheme list?  Or is PLT only fit
> to be consumers of knowledge about functional programming, not producers?

I was asked to clarify my message.

I should make clear that my message was unfair to Matthew Fluet -- I
missed the fact that he's only the publicity chair.  I apologize for
singling out the messenger, not the constructor of the message.

What I find baffling is that the profusion of summer schools on
various topics -- Advanced Functional Programming, Advances in
Programming Languages, whatever -- routinely ignore the Scheme world
entirely.  They're kind enough to invite us to attend (ie, our dollars
or pounds are good), but apparently no innovation ever happens in our
languages that would warrant their ideas to be presented at one of
these workshops.  That is a natural consequence one might draw from
these speaker lists (not only for this one event).  The current
generation of students who attend these events can thus be forgiven
for thinking Scheme is somehow dead, fit only for reading 1976 Lambda
the Ultimate papers.

Note that this isn't only a statement about PLT.  Other fine projects,
such as Feeley's or Clinger's or Dybvig's or Serrano's or ..., get no
respect either.

This attitude doesn't especially surprise me, which is why I long ago
checked out of the FP community even as I continued to work on FP
topics and ideas every day.  But it's unfortunate for those Schemers
who have chosen to stay behind and make their home here.

Shriram