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by hayley-patton 724 days ago
The hell of the systems language is the systems, not that it has infix syntax.
4 comments

When they write this:

> Scheme syntax, with full support for macros,

you can read that not as that Scheme prefix syntax alone is a big selling point, but the fact that it then supports Scheme macros (which are much better than in most other languages that support some kind of macros, partly due to the syntax making this easier).

Then you can read the rest of the sentence, for a bonus:

> and a compatibility library to run Pre-Scheme code in a Scheme interpreter.

Which means that you can do things like develop using this language within a normal Scheme development environment, possibly share code between developing for the PreScheme compiler target and non-PreScheme targets, etc.

> but the fact that it then supports Scheme macros

Good for them.

> possibly share code between developing for the PreScheme compiler target and non-PreScheme targets

"possibly" is a strong word, seeing that Pre-Scheme is a statically typed, explicitly memory managed subset and all. There's a very large and coarse-grained semantic leap.

Then you can read the rest of <https://www.steveblackburn.org/pubs/papers/vmmagic-vee-2009....>, for a bonus.

Pre-Scheme can be run in a Scheme system, then when it is found to be correct there, compiled VERY straightforwardly to C. This is a huge win in terms of productivity. Plus, at the top level, at compile time, you have all of Scheme available.
It looks like with this, you get macros and a repl, though.
Depends on if your "systems programming" activities consist of compiling Scheme or not.