On Feb 22, 2009, at 8:51 PM, Eli Barzilay wrote: > And you clearly are not trying hard to push Scheme forward in any > serious way. (Unless you consider "sort-of good for teaching" a good > way to promote the language.)
Well, in the sense that I've been largely uninvolved for 15 years, true enough. But not all change is 'pushing forward'. It is just 'change', and sometimes it is 'pushing back'. At any rate, I suspect that there are ways in which I would be happy to evolve the language and that you would not. For example, I like facilities for introspection and reflection. The Lisp dialects that I've used (especially MIT Scheme) have had them. Hackers used them continuously. The debugger was written in the language and was live, and not some external process. But for some reason, the RnRs committees always considered those outside the scope of the reports. But it is the reason why some of us didn't like the record and module proposals made in the past -- they went against our desire to make the language more reflective. Some people have much more static views of programs than I do. Programs evolve, and I want them to evolve as they run, not just by changing the source and restarting them from the top. Again, those are areas that the reports have been silent on, and that horrify some people. So whether I want to push it forward (or used to) or not is an issue of whether you care about the things that I care about and vice versa. >>> Now, you come and say that its only success is in teaching (and >>> even that is *partial* success) and that this should, in some way, >>> make me hold opinions that maximize its utility as such. >> >> No. I didn't say that. I said "don't ruin it". I didn't say that >> you had to go out of your way in that direction. > > You keep repeating this; yet it's a non argument. There is a very > clear mirror of this: IMO, making the language case-sensitive is > improving it, so I *am* trying not to ruin it. But you are making it worse in that regard, as far as I'm concerned. Look, I'm happy to believe that _you_ (and others) believe that it is a positive change. But likewise, please accept that I (and others) believe that it was a negative change. >> 1. You think I do not care about Scheme's future? Why would I even >> lurk on the list or respond to any posts? > > I seriously don't know. Everything you said points at R2RS being your > ideal; so why would you get involved in a mailing list where people > are discussing changes to a language that has already changed since > R2RS? That document is there, it will never change. I have not mentioned R2RS once, until this sentence. And I've been involved in every report from R2RS to R5RS and the IEEE standard in the past. The rest of the changes before R6RS (with the notable exception of #f vs. '() which I can talk about if you wish, but probably not worth it), I had no problems with. And as I've mentioned above, there are things that I'd like to see in the language. But they are things that most other people either don't care about or actively reject. So no, R2RS is not 'enough' for me. But R6RS doesn't address those issues either. >> From what I stand, what I said is fact. Mere wishing that it >> were otherwise (and I may vehemently share those wishes) doesn't >> make it any less true. > > And from where I stand, what you say is not only wrong, it is actively > damaging Scheme. Please show me the evidence of Scheme's great success outside of teaching. Please show me the evidence of Scheme's great success even in teaching (I will agree to partial success there, but not overwhelming success, like Java, or Pascal in its day). Until you do, I claim that what I'm saying is true. And if it is, how is the truth damaging Scheme? Isn't it better to understand reality as it is, and act accordingly, than make up a reality and act according to that? >> [...] prefix notation and the parentheses are part of it. [...] >> >> It may not be the primary reason, but it is certainly one. And it >> is the one that they almost invariably give you first, so perhaps we >> should take them at their word. > > "Teaching language" is a sentiment I heard *much* more frequently. I have never heard that one. But admittedly, I haven't been active for 15 years. _______________________________________________ r6rs-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.r6rs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/r6rs-discuss
