[hellcow]

paredit on vim is great.

Working through all the exercises in "The Little Schemer" was a huge help for me when getting started. You start with a few primitives and build up all common tools from those with recursion, like how to build an addition function using just `add1` as an early example from the book.

[fleahunter]

Interesting point about the difficulty of parsing all those parentheses! I remember getting pretty frustrated with it when I first picked up Scheme. It felt like trying to read a book written in a strange code. But then I stumbled onto paredit in Emacs—it totally transformed the way I interacted with the code. The structured editing made it feel more like composing music than wrestling with syntax.

And you're right—working through "The Little Schemer" was a game-changer for me too. There's something about gradually building up to complex concepts that really clicks, right? I wonder if there could be a way to create more beginner-friendly editors that visually guide you through the syntax while you code. Or even some sort of interactive tutorial embedded in the editor that helps by showing expected patterns in real-time.

The tension between users wanting features and implementers wanting simplicity is so prevalent in so many languages, isn't it? Makes me think about how important community feedback is in shaping a language's evolution. What do you all think would be a good compromise for Scheme—more features or a leaner report?