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From: bc@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (bill coderre)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: MacScheme Warning!
Message-ID: <1615@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 5-Oct-87 09:43:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-amt.1615
Posted: Mon Oct  5 09:43:16 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 8-Oct-87 01:45:36 EDT
References: <828@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <3907@watdcsu.waterloo.edu> <382@mcdsun.UUCP> <184@ur-tut.UUCP>
Reply-To: bc@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (bill coderre)
Distribution: world
Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge MA
Lines: 63
Keywords: MacScheme, multitasking, stupid stickers
Summary: Well, gee. And real stuff about MacScheme

I hate those stickers, too. But gee... Some people....

BTW, if you read the licensing agreement, I think you will find it to
be the BEST one around. They actually admit that they are liable for
their software to operate as described in the manual. Not that saying
anything in very small capital letters can change that liability, but
NO other software I've seen (ya listening, lawyers at StripeyFruit??)
is willing to actually have an agreement that accurately reflected
what the real story was. Applause, long and loud. And read the part
about using their libraries in your commercial programs, too.


Anyway, real stuff:

I was anxiously waiting for this full release (version 1.0), and I am
impressed.  Mosty important, with MacScheme, one can develop a full
Mac application that will run in 512K (not very substantial, and maybe
slow, but it's impressive) THAT IS MULTIFINDER COMPATIBLE. Yes, there
are Scheme functions (wait-next-event) and (surrender-timeslice).
Pretty darn impressive.

Scheme is a small, friendly Lisp, quick to learn, with the syntax as
"obvious" as possible. Not the 775 or so functions of Common Lisp, but
enough. (I still wish there were built-in object-oriented programming,
and packages.)

In my previous rant, I mistakenly said that MacScheme didn't have
macros. WRONG. They always have. It's those plutonium coffee beans
that got to me.

MacSheme is a full, letter-perfect implementation of the Scheme
standard, and includes a trivial load file that converts it into a
slightly off dialect that is used in the book "Structure and
Interpretation in Computer Programming" (Sussman and Abelson and
Sussman, 1986, MIT Press), which is a very popular text for an
introductory computer science course.

MacScheme also includes support for Mac programming in a pseudo-object
oriented style, and enables scheme code to have several things running
at once. Mini-tasking, as it were. Windows, menus, and events are
dealt with nicely. Works on Mac II. Has an abstruse bug on Prodigy 4.
I'm negotiating to get it fixed.

An application builder is included, which strips a heap dump and sets
the right bits to make the thing runnable. Code is now compiled, and
reasonably fast. (Gabriel benchmarks were cited which claimed
MacScheme is faster than Vax Common Lisp. I haven't verified them.)

Base price, for the whole works, $395. I don't know if they are
selling just the Scheme part minus Mac Toolsmith (the Mac support
code) anymore. They have educational and volume discounts.

I could honestly see doing consulting jobs in Scheme, for
non-super-speedy code, and being able to finish an application that
wuld work in a 512K or multi-finder environment, in a weekend. That's
the power I want, and I think $395 is a good price for it.

Semantic Micro Systems, see MacUser for address information.

Anyway, I've only just got this version 1.0, so there might be some
hidden bugs or slight inaccuracies in the above. More later.

Cons and enjoy,..............................................bc