Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mit-eddie!snorkelwacker!ai-lab!zurich.ai.mit.edu!jinx From: jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Guillermo J. Rozas) Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme Subject: Re: What is a Scheme? Message-ID: Date: 23 Aug 90 23:07:40 GMT References: <9008221644.aa03978@mc.lcs.mit.edu> <1990Aug23.020704.19833@rice.edu> Sender: news@ai.mit.edu Reply-To: jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab. Lines: 36 In-reply-to: matthias@titan.rice.edu's message of 23 Aug 90 02:07:04 GMT Guillermo J. Rozas writes that "since [Scheme] is such that even numbers and strings (and pairs, etc.) can be built out of the very powerful glue of procedures." I disagree. Please show us how to build numbers such that number? and procedure? work and our programs still work, too. You did not read my message carefully. I said "To me the core of Scheme is [lambda,set!,quote]." It is clear that if language A is a subset of language B, all programs written in A will run in B, while the converse need not hold. Interpreting "core" as "essential subset", it is clear that your objection is silly. Any program that I write with [lambda,set!,quote] will run in "full" Scheme. You are criticizing my core because the converse does not (may not) hold, ie., for not supporting the whole language, but that was never the intent. You don't need to dig into discriminating between zero and false, and the empty list (although discussion from another mailing list should tell you that I don't mind not being able to distinguish between them) to find issue with my core. I did not include call-with-current-continuation nor conditionals yet I cannot define them on top of my core, and I don't intend to program in continuation passing style all the time, which is, _essentially_, the only way to get the functionality out of it. GLS asked for opinions about what "a Scheme" would be. I gave mine. Neither I nor GLS (if I understand his message correctly) attempted to answer what made IEEE draft Scheme IEEE draft Scheme or R^3.9* Scheme R^3.9* Scheme. The answer is straight-forward: the full requirements of the corresponding document.