[plt-scheme] Examples of Scheme (or Lisp) in real-world

From: Ciprian Dorin, Craciun (ciprian.craciun at gmail.com)
Date: Tue Mar 9 15:22:40 EST 2010

    Hello all!

    I'm in the position where I'm teaching a Lisp laboratory at my
university (undergraduate level). The problem is that all the students
are reluctant to this new language and deem it somewhere between a toy
and an academic / research language... (I know... I'm a bad teacher :)
.)

    So in order to capture their attention I would like to give them
some real-world applications where Lisp (Scheme, Common Lisp, or
something derived from Lisp) is a major component. (By real world
application I mean something released either as a software product or
a web-based system...)

    (I know that the main reason for learning Lisp is both for it's
functional programming style and meta-programming... But try telling
this to a bunch of kids who think that knowing PHP, MySQL and the
latest and greatest JavaScript library means computer science... :) )

    So I know a few ones:
    * Yahoo Store (early version) done by Paul Graham;
    * Reddit (written in PLT Scheme and then rewritten in Python);
    * Y Combinator (Arc over PLT Scheme);
    * WebBlocks (actually a framework);
    * any other examples?

    Replies very much appreciated,
    Ciprian.


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