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by xscott 20 days ago
Scheme is (or at least was) coherent. You don't need to look any further than set/setf/setq to see that Common Lisp is "organically grown" from the fertilizer of a committee. CL does its best to make every other lisp more attractive.
3 comments
rootnod3 20 days ago
Which Scheme are we talking about? R5RS? R7RS-small? R6RS? With SRFIs? Without? Which scheme? Is it `(library...)` or `(define-module...)`?
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xscott 20 days ago
Heh, I'd probably take R4RS with define-syntax :-)
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rootnod3 20 days ago
I mean, good choice, but you see the point, right? As much as ANSI CL has it's flaws, it has a standard, as much of a mixed bag it might be. Scheme is just a general potpourri of "we kinda have a guideline, but do whatever".

I would very much prefer scheme if the different implementations had a working standard. But I can't take my Chez-scheme code and throw it into Guile-scheme.

But pretty good chance I can take my ECL code and throw it into SBCL or LispWorks.

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xscott 20 days ago
> you see the point, right?

Bah, I think this debate was already old when I first saw people arguing it on comp.lang.lisp in the 90s. I don't have a dog in this fight other than to reject the notion that Common Lisp is "coherent" and not "organically grown".

The original Scheme belongs in the category of languages like Standard ML and SmallTalk, where a small, careful, and talented group designed them with focus. Common Lisp seems like a bunch of smart people with competing interest and legacy baselines tried to meet in the middle. To the extent CL is more pragmatic, it's another example of "Worse is Better".

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rahen 20 days ago
Scheme has a coherent and minimalist design, but its ecosystem and abstraction facilities feel too sparse for large applications.

When I started building a Lisp-based machine learning framework, Guile seemed like the right choice because it provides GOOPS and generic functions, yet I still ended up with a lot of boilerplate to compensate for the lack of a strong type system.

Scheme feels to me like C is to C++: not ergonomic for large-scale application development. Go is one of those languages that has both minimalism and productivity.

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a-french-anon 19 days ago
Common Lisp didn't grow into its warts, though, it was intentionally a "Common" Lisp. A compromise, like I wrote.
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