Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!usc!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!RICE.EDU!matthias
From: matthias@RICE.EDU (Matthias Felleisen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: What is a Scheme?
Message-ID: <9008281515.AA09249@leto.rice.edu>
Date: 28 Aug 90 15:15:17 GMT
References: <9008281447.AA09239@leto.rice.edu>
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
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Hi! My original posting said that my existing programs should work.
This is the constraint that is crucial: you cannot express
number?/procedure? if you accept that condition. Think about it. The
proof of this claim is contained in my paper on expressiveness that I
advertised (modulo some formalism). As you know, if you admit
unrestricted classes of translations you can always encode programs as
some basic data (quote/cons, numbers) and interpret/compile&eval them.
The classes of translations in which you think you can satisfy my
claim can do that. Your statement is therefore "without teeth", i.e.,
not very meaningful.

If we interpret "essence" as what we like best, we don't have a
dialogue but only a debate. What I like best is based on emotions,
what is absolutely crucial to the language (in the above sense) is a
formal statement and can be discussed (e.g. which classes of
translations are interesting for what reason). I prefer logical
discussions over emotional debates (the latter are useless for me as a
language researcher) but am willing to do both (South Germans are
hot-blooded, too :-) ).

-- Matthias