[pmoriarty]

> Scheme focuses on small (and mathematically elegant) core language, while Common Lisp, with its focus on being practical

I don't think it's really fair to say modern Schemes aren't focused on being practical. Nor that they're small.

Take a look at Chicken or Racket, and you'll see that they have quite substantial libraries and many features above and beyond the specs that make them much more practical than the core Scheme spec alone.

Quite beside that, there's also the new R7RS[1] spec's "large" language is just that: large. It's also focused on being practical. So I wouldn't say that the traditional Scheme vs CL divisions in terms of size and practicality still hold.

I would say that Scheme is more elegant than CL, and more modern, and less crufty. Unfortunately, there are still far more programmers using CL than Scheme. Hopefully with Emacs' move to Guile that will change.

That said, I still love CL, and would far rather use it than any other language, except Scheme.

[1] - http://trac.sacrideo.us/wg/raw-attachment/wiki/WikiStart/r7r...