named-let proposal

[George Springer <springer@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>]

As the user community continues to grow at its current pace
it is emcumbent on us to recognize that many universities will
be teaching Scheme to undergraduates.  Dan Friedman and I have
been grappling with what we should do about the named let problem.
Students at Indiana University are quite confused about named
let as they are taught to understand let as a binding construct
having nothing to do with recursion.  One of the good things about
Scheme is that it is in the process of removing puns from LISP.
Now, we need to remove a pun from Scheme.  The feeling that I
got from the meeting is that we don't want to lose two aspects of
the operation.  The first is that it creates a recursive definition
and the second is that it does binding like let.  The suggestion
by Guy to introduce reclet was good because it satisfied both these
concerns, on the otherhand some were upset because it seemed to close
to letrec.  So, I will suggest bindrec.  It has both aspects and
seems easy to say.  My concern is that pedagogically, named let
in the presence of unnamed let is a disaster and since I am writing
a book for freshman and would like some way of doing named let the
time has come to resolve this issue.  

... George Springer