Re: [Scheme Steering Committee announcements] New Scheme Language Steering Committee

[Linas Vepstas]

Hi,

2009/3/2 Mitchell Wand <address@hidden>:
> I am pleased to officially announce the results of the election for the
> Scheme Language Steering Committee.


Thanks to all who voted. I'm not familiar with the work
of the steering committee, and so abstained; however,
as a scheme user, I am very concerned about its status
and future and general social acceptance.

I interact daily with Java programmers and  Python users,
and work on a project whose components are variously
written not only in guile, but also perl, C, C++, SQL, and
of course python, ruby and java. Many people I interact with
do not have a clear idea of what scheme/lisp *is*; and for
some reason there's a slight negative connotation
associated with lisp .. possibly fear; I cannot gauge the
core problem.  However, these folks do affect the
decision-making process, and push the project in
various directions.  Thus, as a scheme user, it is vital
for me that scheme (guile) have a widespread, positive
perception and acceptance.

Perception is not enough: I'd like to see the actual fruits:
a large selection of libraries; library repositories analogous
to CPAN; debugging, tracing and performance-tuning  tools,
credible integration with other popular technologies, and so
on.  Aside from a focus on the core language, stuff like
this is what's needed to make Scheme vibrant; I'd like to
see it happen.

--linas