| Blake McBride 2008-01-28, 10:35 pm |
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Two issues here.
The first is Scheme's lack of an object oriented system (OO). In
today's world OO programming is as fundamental to programming as
"while" loops are instead of goto statements. OO concepts are
probably the biggest and most important addition to computer languages
since structured programming (multithreading is next!!). Not having a
standard OO facility renders Scheme somewhat archaic.
And, if/when one is added it has got to be powerful - like CLOS. It
has got to have multiple inheritance. It has got to have a full MOP.
I started to write a CLOS like OO system in very portable Scheme. I
am about 80% done but haven't worked on it in a long time. I get
discouraged about adding a good and portable OO system to Scheme
because of Scheme's many other issues.
The second issue has to do with a standard module system. I know R6
has defines a library system. This is fine. The problem is that
virtually none of the Scheme implementations has implemented it and
virtually all of the Scheme implementors has publicly stated that
they will not support R6RS! Where exactly does that leave us?
Blake McBride
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