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by guicho271828 2482 days ago 

    1.4 The Desktop-Scripting Problem
    
    Related to the shell-language design problem is the desktop-scripting problem:
    How should unrelated programs written in different languages be integrated—especially
    in an ad-hoc manner in a desktop environment? Such a task can require a large
    amount of glue code, written by users who are unfamiliar with the inner workings of
    the programs they are using. Notable attempts at solving the desktop-scripting prob-
    lem include the TCL language [Ousterhout, 1989] and Guile Scheme [Blandy, 1998].
    However, while most of these approaches use a large, robust language, it still remains
    difficult to integrate them with external programs—instead putting the burden on
    those programs to integrate with their system. We believe a shell-based approach is
    promising
Hmm, Scheme as a large language? Well, I don't know much about the extensions Guile Scheme has over RxRS, would hope for someone to add info here.
2 comments
chubot 2482 days ago
This is only a partial answer, but I remember the designers of Julia saying that the Scheme spec spends many dozens of pages on the semantics of integers and floats. That makes the language large.

Remember that Scheme is not the lambda calculus -- you need dynamic types like integers, strings, vectors, hash tables, IO, etc. to get anything done.

In contrast in Julia they said that the semantics of numbers are defined in Julia. Julia has a much richer notion of number than any other language AFAICT, e.g. int8 .. int128, uint8 .. uint128, vectors of those, matrices of those, rationals, etc. They're all on the "same level" -- there aren't primitives vs. libraries, as far as I know.

https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/integers-and-floatin...

https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/complex-and-rational...

https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/arrays/

https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/conversion-and-promo...

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zeckalpha 2482 days ago
Separate from any implementation specific extension, the various RxRS can be considered small or large, too.
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