Re: Scheme community

From: Dr.R.F.Wolpert <wolpert_at_uark.edu>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 14:22:20 -0600

A few months ago we had a short exchange re. why scheme despite its obvious
merits is not really seen to "catch on". I have written to the Sebastopol
crowd, pointing at some of the exciting things that are there in scheme
(including the GIMP -- using scheme as a scripting language), and I got this
reply back:

>We have no plans currently to publish a book on scheme. It is a language we
>watch, for the reasons you state. It has a passionate user group, one of
>whom, like you, writes us from time to time suggesting a scheme book. (We
>have similar requests from users of a number of other languages, like
>Eiffel, CAML, squeak, and pike.)

>We haven't seen evidence that the scheme community is large enough to
>support the publication of a book. If we see more evidence of scheme's
>widespread adoption, say, on the level of Python or PHP, we might
>reconsider our decision.

I still believe that the key to a wider adoption of scheme is the availability
of a popular, easy to read, enjoyable to read book with an important
publisher: there must be scheme book on the shelves in your local bookshop, as
there is at least one for Perl and Python, and all sorts of MS-stuff. So --
more public face could help: newspaper articles on scheme in our own
communities, stating that that great contract we've just won is going to work
with scheme, etc. is what we need.

Rembrandt
Received on Thu Mar 15 2001 - 21:20:45 CET