Talk:Scheme (programming language)

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^{Date: 01:11, 20 October 2009 (UTC)}

Computing: CompSci B‑class

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Scheme (programming language) was one of the Engineering and technology good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
June 20, 2006	Peer review	Reviewed
June 24, 2006	Good article nominee	Listed
December 2, 2008	Good article reassessment	Delisted

Current status: Delisted good article

Archives

2003–2007

Comments

"Each comment is preceded by a semicolon (;) and extends for the rest of the line. Some implementations allow comments to span multiple lines by wrapping them with a #|...|# (possibly nested). Other implementations allow an entire s-expression to be commented out by prepending it with #;.[7] These two comment forms are included in the R6RS."

Three kinds of comments are described, but the last sentence mention only two forms. I don't know which form are referenced. Could anybody make it clearer please ? Halladba (talk) 22:22, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

the last two must be the new ones from R6RS because R5RS only has the (;) whole-line comments. --MarSch (talk) 16:30, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Used on Mars rover

I believe I heard at MIT that Scheme was used on one of the Mars rovers. Ten points to anyone who can find a reliable reference. 8) -- Beland (talk) 00:43, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Expansion needed

This article has been a mess for some time, and I'm planning an expansion, with possibly a rewrite of much of the article.

Some recent developments in Scheme standardization should be covered (see http://scheme-reports.org/). R6RS has divided Schemers more than any other event in the history of the language, and the Scheme Steering Committee has proposed that two Scheme versions should be specified: a small language more akin to R5RS, and a larger language closer to R6RS.

Meanwhile the coverage of key concepts is poorly handled. The following key language features need to be covered correctly:

Continuations
Hygienic macros
Multiple values
Numeric tower
Proper tail calls

The article should integrate with lisp (programming language) so that basic lisp concepts covered adequately in that article (lists, consing, etc) are not dwelt on here.

The SRFI process should be covered in more depth.

The Steering Committee recently remarked that "Scheme has the unhappy distinction of being the world's most unportable programming language" [1], and this undeniable fact isn't really covered here at all. Their point is that if you want to write in Scheme, you have to choose a particular implementation, and having done that you will find that most of the software you write for that implementation will not run unaltered on other implementations. --TS 03:42, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Language elements

It's hard to avoid the temptation to turn an encyclopedia article on a programming language into a miniature tutorial for the language. The "Language elements" section is messy and some parts of it need to be rewritten and other parts need to be incorporated elsewhere--as I have already done with some sections. --TS 16:09, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disney World

I've removed the following for now:

Chez Scheme has been used at Disney World in Florida for controlling virtual rides.

The citation given for this was "Kent Dybvig, invited to talk at the International Conference on Functional Programming, 2006." We need better sourcing than that. --TS 19:06, 20 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Stuff removed from Boolean data type article

The following section was removed from the article Boolean data type:
begin removed text

Scheme has two special symbols #t and #f which represent the logical values of true and false respectively. However, any non-#f value is interpreted as true. Note that unlike Lisp, nil or '(), the empty list, is separate from #f in Scheme, and therefore is considered true.

end removed text
Is there a place for this text in the Scheme-related articles? Perhaps in the Wikibook? Thanks, and all the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 00:08, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this. I think we already cover it all in the present article, but it might be useful for the book (which was rather moribund last time I checked). --TS 00:10, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Forth

I've reverted this edit which was based on an opinion stated in the edit summary: "Forth is even easier to implement, and has as much power from further readily available extensions."

This isn't because I want to engage in a debate in the relative power of Forth and Scheme (that isn't what we do here at Wikipedia) but because I think it's bad form to insert personal opinion into articles. For more on what is meant by "power" in the context of Scheme and other Lisps, read the "Fundamental design features" section. Any language may be augmented to contain these features, but every standard-conforming implementation of Scheme provides them without the need for augmentation. --TS 17:57, 1 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]