[asciilifeform]

The prospect of Scheme as a potential mainstream programming language went down with the rest of the Lisp ship in the late-1980s AI winter - the same one that sank Symbolics and anyone who was remotely Lisp-guilty by association.

It is no accident that it survived almost exclusively in non-saltmine sanctuaries like MIT, where industry herdthink held less sway. In the linked article, Sussman directly admits that he is unable or unwilling to fight back against the intellectual decay that has consumed non-academic programming.

He has decided to "go with the flow" - namely, the flow of industrial sewage into students' heads.