

PLT Scheme 4.0 to introduce major new changes to Scheme - lurkage
http://blog.plt-scheme.org/2008/06/plt-scheme-version-40-is-coming-soon.html

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euccastro
Unfortunate title. PLT Scheme 4.0 introduces major new changes to _PLT_
Scheme.

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jimbokun
"Improvements to the PLT Scheme language include better syntax for modules,
better support for optional and keyword function arguments, more expressive
syntax for structure types, streamlined hash-table operations, new syntax for
list comprehensions and iterations, a more complete and consistent set of list
and string operations, and reduced dependence on mutable pairs."

In the abstract, sounds like a Scheme that can compete with Python and Ruby.

~~~
KirinDave
One can only hope. With all the furor over the quality of interpreters that
SquirrelFish has kicked off in the community, the MzScheme interpreter is
looking pretty good. It's extremely fast and also very lean, and the plt-
scheme is a very good language with a competent FFI, multi-platform support,
and a lot of advanced features.

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gills
I've been using the pre-release versions for a while now and there are some
nice improvements. Some of the syntactic sugar is really nice to use, like the
new module and require forms, and the generalized lambda forms (combined
lambda, opt-lambda, define/kw,...).

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TFrancis
Does anyone else think that PLT Scheme dialect is moving closer to Common
Lisp?

~~~
jimbokun
Stone soup.

Quick summary:

A stranger walks into a village, puts a pot on a fire, fills it with water
and, in full view of the villagers, drops in a single stone. Curious, the
villagers ask what he's up to.

"Making stone soup."

"You can make soup from a stone?"

"Yes, it's very good. However, it's even better with a little bit of..."

You see how this is going to go. One by one, the villagers bring some little
thing or other to add to the stone soup, and in the end they all enjoy some,
shocked at how good a soup made from a stone can taste.

The relevance: The whole point of Scheme is to be a minimalist programming
language. However, then someone says, "Yes, I love this minimal programming
language. Very elegant. However, if you just had support for hash tables..."

After several iterations of this, you have users of this programming language
saying "Amazing how much you can do with this minimalist programming
language..."

~~~
brlewis
No, it doesn't happen that way.

It's SICP that amazes people at what can be done with a minimalist programming
language.

People who use a Scheme implementation with lots of additions have no
illusions of minimalism.

~~~
schtog
im watching the videos from/about sicp now:

[http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-
le...](http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-
lectures/videos/)

amazing stuff, recommend everyone to watch.

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hsmyers
I just did a little wandering around the available documentation on PLT-Scheme
and noticed that large pieces are untouched since 2004. Other large pieces
seem to be missing. Seems like an un-propitious start for 4.0! Or perhaps this
is what they meant by new work for 4.0 docs...

~~~
gills
try here: <http://pre.plt-scheme.org/docs/html/>

