Ask HN: Why MIT-Scheme is regressing?

2 points by accidx 3y ago ↗ HN

mit-scheme is the iconic implementation, the one used by Gerald Sussman, author of the famous SICP textbook. So it's surprising that mit-scheme is regressing, that it's only available for two platforms, that it doesn't work at all on the new Apple M1 processor, that it doesn't work on Windows (although it did before), that it doesn't work on Raspberry PI.

The editor edwin, which is part of the mit-scheme, and which allows beautiful debugging in almost the same way as in SLIME for Common Lisp is documented almost nowhere. If you want to make some new extension or modification for edwin or you want to configure it a little differently, the only way to do that is to study the source code.

I don't know about you, but this is strange to me: it is one of the best (and oldest) scheme implementations, but day by day it is more and more clear that it is slowly sinking into oblivion. Why is it like that?

1 comment

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mustermannBB 3y ago ↗

It is being actively maintained. More important, IMHO, would be if they ( I think it is Chris Hanson these days) would greatly improve some of the documentation. For quite a few things you need to read source code. There is not much for beginners to get started with IMO. Also I think there was a way how some guy got it to work on the M1 Apple. It may have been through a VM however, IDK. As for edwin, I was under the impression that one was left behind years ago. Not sure if it is good enough for what you need (I never used edwin so I don't know at all) but there is Geiser. But I also kinda of agree, compared to other implementations, MIT Scheme seems to have lost some steam. Chicken and Guile for example seem more practical and accessible.