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Greg Harvey <Greg.Harvey@thezone.net> writes: > The problem with cl is that the standardization wasn't based so much > on refining the features of the language, as making sure that most of > what already existed in lisp implementations would still exist in > future implementations. A lot of vendors had vested interest here, and > the direction was more one of avoiding breaking existing code, rather > than making cl as consistant (syntactically, at least) as possible. > > Scheme isn't really in the same boat, for a couple of > reasons: > > 1) Any code that's been written for more than one implementation has > basically stuck to the core constructs of the language. Anything > that targetted stuff not in the core were mostly being written for > one implementation > > 2) Less money involved, and therefore a less determined push for one > feature or another (ignoring egos ;). I can think of a couple of > lisp/cl vendors, but no scheme vendors come to mind. Scheme's been > more of an academic language until now, which could actually give > it great advantages when it comes to moving into the 'real world' Firstly, Chez scheme is a commercial scheme. There are others, but I can't think of their names right now. In any case, this is exactly why I think there will be some form of standardization of a larger scheme. It seems to me that scheme is about where lisp was before the Common Lisp standard. There are many implementations, each providing a more complete language in similar but incompatible ways. However, although there doesn't seem to be much money at stake (no big AI contracts, smaller & fewer commercial implementations), there are advantages: 1. R5RS as a core standard. Lisp didn't have a any pre-CL standards, and some lisps were *very* different from others, making developing the CL standard a difficult task. Scheme implementations aren't so different from each other (on the user side) because they all try to be R5RS. 2. The different scheme implementors are interested in a larger standard and are working amongst themselves towards developing consistent libraries. 3. SLIB exists. 4. CL & ANSI CL as prior art/useful ideas & idioms. 5. Lots of prior art wrt foreign fcn interfaces, network interfaces, regexp interfaces, ... -- Harvey J. Stein BFM Financial Research hjstein@bfr.co.il