[plt-scheme] PLT Scheme saves the day

PLT Scheme recently helped save a presentation at an ACM workshop.

We needed a demonstration of our system that could be run on a 
two-laptop LAN during the presentation.  Whether the existing Java 
server part of the system could be adapted rapidly enough for this 
purpose, or would even run well on a Windows laptop, was questionable.  
I'd never used the PLT Web Server before, but I found that I was able to 
use the stateful servlets to reimplement the pertinent functionality of 
the server much more quickly than I believe that the existing Java code 
could have been adapted.  After we ran into some snags elsewhere, the 
time savings on the server seemed to make the difference between having 
a demo/video in time and having only slides.

I have impressed this fact upon my colleagues, who mostly remember 
Scheme from SICP problem sets, and who were not aware what a nice R&D 
platform PLT Scheme now is.  One of my colleagues was also impressed by 
how PLT has been able to get research products out and used in practice, 
contrasted with the not-uncommon situation of good systems research 
disappearing because it's not accessible.

Now, if they'd only let me replace all this Java and C++ code, we'd 
finish the rest of the project in half the time. :)

Neil Van Dyke
Research Scientist
MIT CSAIL