That doesn't really change anything, however; his program was acting abnormally, and there is nothing suggesting that anyone tried to attack the problem systematically through a process of elimination and deduction.
There's just not enough information in the anecdote, and (in my opinion) everyone comes out of it looking a bit silly because of the missing pieces.
There is nothing to be learned from this anecdote that sheds any philosophical light on Scheme vs. Lisp, life at MIT, etc. We learn that Scheme has/had a function that one should not use, and that computers used to be really dinky things. So I truly don't know why Greenspun wrote down this anecdote.
His main point is that Common Lisp is better than Scheme when you need to get things done. Scheme may be more elegant, but it's not developed with a focus on practical utility (i.e. no sort function in the standard).
That's one interpretation, but Greenspun never says what happened when he tried to use the correct function; after all, his Scheme program seems to have been complete at one point, which means that rewriting in Lisp was not more "practical" as such.
His point about the Lisp program being smaller is interesting, but still entirely anecdotal: we know nothing about the program, and for all we know, Greenspun was a Scheme novice at the time of the story.
I have a deep dislike for anecdotal "X vs. Y" stories because they don't shed any light on anything; they're just glib, cheap observations that make for a good story (albeit in this case, not that good).
That doesn't really change anything, however; his program was acting abnormally, and there is nothing suggesting that anyone tried to attack the problem systematically through a process of elimination and deduction.
There's just not enough information in the anecdote, and (in my opinion) everyone comes out of it looking a bit silly because of the missing pieces.
There is nothing to be learned from this anecdote that sheds any philosophical light on Scheme vs. Lisp, life at MIT, etc. We learn that Scheme has/had a function that one should not use, and that computers used to be really dinky things. So I truly don't know why Greenspun wrote down this anecdote.