Re: Scheme pre-R6RS Workshop at ICFP - What is the Point?

[Richard Kelsey <kelsey@research.nj.nec.com>]

   Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 02:35:31 -0400
   From: Alan Bawden <Alan@LCS.MIT.EDU>

   I agree with Kent.

I guess I do too, now that I understand his objection.  I shouldn't
have mentioned R6RS without discussing the workshop here first.  Mea
culpa.

   The workshop web page explicitly excludes several things that we really
   need to talk about.  What good is it to talk about records again?  We first
   voted down a record proposal 10 years ago.  [...] Why should I travel to
   Baltimore next September to go over it again?

You obviously shouldn't.  But there are a lot of people who have
come to Scheme in the last 10 years and don't know any of this.
The workshop was meant to be a means for bringing new people into
the discussion, with new energy and, if we were really lucky, new
ideas.  Anyone who gets added to this mailing list these days (if
it is still possible to get on it) isn't going to learn much from
the deafening silence.

   Before I spend any more effort (and money) discussing records, exceptions,
   modules, objects, binary I/O or Unicode characters, I would like to know
   more about what our -goals- are, and about the -process- we plan to use to
   achieve them.  Do we want Scheme to remain a teaching/research language
   that can only be used for real-world programming with great difficulty?  Or
   can we come up with some way to satisfy both camps?  Do we want to change
   the way language decisions are made?  Abandon consensus?  Do everything
   under the IEEE process?  Appoint a Scheme Czar? Freeze the language and go
   home?

Why do you think discussing these issues will be any more fruitful
than a renewed discussion of records?
                                             -Richard