How many kinds of Schemers are there?

Since the beginning of my study of Scheme I have tried to understand the community. What I have found is that if one had to define a single trait by which you could make a classification it would come down to whether or not they wanted more than what R5RS defines, or not. A few days ago in this thread on comp.lang.scheme, a poster elaborated on this:


1. People who prefer R5RS, and think it should not have been extended.
(Felix Winkelmann, maintainer of Chicken)
2. People who like R5RS, dislike R6RS, but think a better standard for
Scheme is possible (Will Clinger, maintainer of Larceny)
3. People who use R6RS as their primary language (Aziz Ghoulum,
maintainer of Ikarus)
4. People who use a particular Scheme implementation (myself, using
PLT)

As he pointed out, that is a non-exhaustive list. A question for the reader:

“What is missing?”

4 thoughts on “How many kinds of Schemers are there?”

  1. There’s also people who think R4RS was good enough (example: Aubrey Jaffer, SCM & SLIB maintainer).

  2. Vitaly:
    I see. I have heard folks say that R5RS didn’t add much beyond macros (in general, not Aubrey specifically).

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