[loose-cannon]

I thought Scheme was just an educational tool - a minimal language that allows the student to explore language construction & design relatively quickly. I'm not sure I understand your comment about homoiconicity leading people astray. Isn't that the characteristic feature of lisp? Doesn't that dramatically simplify generating code (in principle)?

[jrapdx3]

I find it interesting that a number of PLs were initially developed as educational or research tools but later expanded for general use. Some examples are Pascal, Scheme, Prolog. AFAIK many development languages are used in education so the distinction is rather fuzzy.

Several Scheme implementations, e.g., Chicken, Chez, Gambit, are capable of producing almost any type of program. I'm most familiar with Chicken Scheme. Comes with a large "standard" library plus a broad range of available extensions. Its easy to use FFI adds to productivity.

My experience anyway. Of course, mileage varies widely among users of any language.

[loose-cannon]

Yea sorry. I didn't mean to criticize or diminish its value by saying it's just an educational tool. It's a powerful tool that lets you do some advanced things quickly. That's totally valuable outside of an educational setting. And I didn't mean to imply that there's any limitation to its use.

I just don't understand the criticism in the post I was replying to.

[Jtsummers]

> I thought Scheme was just an educational tool

That's one use. It's also used in commercial and open source systems. Guile, for instance, has been used as an extension language (like lua and others) in many projects.