On 6/15/07, Thomas Lord <lord at emf.net> wrote:
> Sam TH wrote:
> > The second group (which hasn't made much of an appearance in the R6RS
> > process) has been overtaken by events. The major Scheme
> > implementations and communities had already decided the broad outlines
> > of R6RS, before the editors even began their work. The time to oppose
> > syntax-case, and modules, and Unicode, has now passed - they have been
> > successful and widely adopted. The alternative to adopting them was
> > adopting nothing.
>
>
> I think that is wrong.
What, in particular, do you think is wrong here?
> You place Chicken in that "second group"
> yet, by external appearances, Chicken *is* now a major Scheme
> implementation (insofar as *any* Scheme implementation can
> be designated as "major"). The folks behind the R6 effort might
> benefit by paying more attention to it.
To the best of my knowledge, Felix Winkelmann hasn't published in the
Scheme Workshop (or other academic PL venues), nor is Chicken
associated with any of the longstanding Scheme communities, nor is
Chicken widely used in some other circle that would bring it greater
notice.
This isn't to deride Chicken, which seems like a neat and popular
implementation. But it doesn't have any of the traditional entrees to
the most well known circle of implementations.
Finally, Chicken has implemented syntax-case and a module system.
> > The third group has been overtaken by different events. The Scheme
> > community no longer consists of a small number of people, all of whom
> > are associated with an implementation that they take part in, as it
> > might have in 1992. Most people who use Scheme don't implement
> > Scheme, they use it to write real programs. And they thus want
> > Scheme, as a language, to evolve to help them write those programs.
> > The production of a new language design, whether it is called Scheme
> > or not, doesn't help them, since they've already chosen the language
> > they want. What does help them is evolving the language they've got,
> > and making it more portable and better-specified.
>
> You nowhere explain why the SRFI process is not at least adequate
> if not better suited for that process.
But why should the SRFI process be used? This *is* Scheme - a group
of people representing a broad swath of the community, revising the
R5RS. Why shouldn't they call it R6RS - that's what it is.
The other reason is that maintaining motivation as *Scheme*, and not
just as a bunch of people on an email list, has lots of uses - as you
of course admit, otherwise there would be no reason to debate.
> > These claims offer little consolation to the people who've been left
> > behind by the decisions made by the R6RS committee, but they perhaps
> > offer some explanation of why things have turned out as they have.
> >
>
> To explain "why things have turned out as they have" we would have
> to turn to post-structuralist philosophy's of history, of a Foucault-like
> nature. I'm game if you are. I would suggest we start by looking
> at the technical term of art "language standard" to understand how it
> functions in the contemporary discourse. A good place to begin might
> be by identifying the point in history where that term first entered the
> field of programming and to try to unearth records of the discourse
> that surrounded that event.
Well, I'm not much of a post-structuralist (structures are important
in history as well as programming), but I don't think the history of
the word "language standard" is that useful here. And as for why
calling something a "standard" vs a "RFI" is important, that should be
pretty obvious. Finally, the R6RS doesn't call itself a standard -
although I don't think that distinction means very much here.
--
sam th
samth at ccs.neu.edu
Received on Fri Jun 15 2007 - 22:16:54 UTC