Two Schemes

The Scheme Steering Committee recently released a position statement in which they recommend splitting Scheme into "separate but compatible languages:" a small Scheme that is basically a modernized R5RS, and a large Scheme based on R6RS but with, as they put it, a "happier outcome."

The idea is that the small Scheme would be aimed at "educators, casual implementors, researchers, embedded languages, and `50-page' purists," while the large Scheme would be aimed at programmers and implementors of industrial strength Schemes. As a practical matter this would probably mean that large Scheme would have small scheme as a core and extend it with a larger standard library and perhaps some extra core features to support things like a module system. The small and large group charters specifically state that the languages be compatible and that small Scheme be a subset of large Scheme.

I think this is a good idea. By and large I'm happy with R5RS, but it would be nice to have a standard library for things like networking. On the other hand, I recognize that industrial use of Scheme requires things like a standard module system and perhaps (but only perhaps) some object oriented features like CLOS. In any event, the goal is to make Scheme portable among implementations, something that is dramatically missing currently.

Scheme is a great language and we should support changes that will increase its use and acceptance, but not at the cost of losing the features and principles that make it such a great language. Specifically, I would oppose any PLT-like changes that remove functionality in the service of protecting programmers from themselves. To paraphrase dmr, if you want Pascal, you know where to find it. Scheme is a Lisp dialect and Lisp is all about power, not about artificial restraints.