Arthur Gleckler wrote:
> I will certainly grant that it does not generate small, stand-alone
> executables, but I couldn't let your "the one real (extant) compiler
> is commercial" statement go uncorrected.
Merely the ability to produce stand-alone executables isn't very
interesting; I haven't kept track of Scheme->C, but I have my own
Scheme-to-C compiler that handles all of Scheme and produces
stand-alone executables. I wouldn't actually *use* it, though (not
until the optimizer is completed).
Also, as I think Olin confirmed a few days ago, there's little new
work being done with MIT Scheme. The little benchmarking I've done
with MIT Scheme didn't classify it as outstanding. It has a lot of
features, some of which might be handy (I recall seeing some X/MS
Windows support), some of which aren't to me (first-class
environments). Performance-wise, for example, does MIT Scheme
implement Hieb's call/cc algorithm? Last I looked, I don't believe it
did. Likewise, the Chez people have worked on multi-arity procedures,
multiple-values, etc. Has MIT? If it has, I'd be thrilled to stand
corrected. (It's also pretty large; the last time I tried, it
wouldn't run on my Linux box without defenstration.)
Since the passage of Orbit, Chez seems to be the most innovative
Scheme compiler around; MacScheme appears to have done some neat
things, as does Gambit. I don't believe Twobit has ever been
released. Scheme48's points of interest lie in the language design
direction (exceptions, modules, etc.), but performance-wise it's still
some ways away from Chez.
> MIT Scheme has a good development environment as well.
Until your program has an error, of course. At that point, for all
the glories of xscheme and C-a through C-z (C-w?), you may just as
well be using gdb. In fact, gdb might be more handy for some things.
(This isn't to say any other Scheme system does better. They don't.)
This isn't relevant to Scsh; my apologies to the list.
'shriram
PS: I have no personal beef against MIT Scheme or Scheme48. I have
used them both, and am grateful for having had them at the time.
Nor do I have any direct relationship with Chez, except as a user.
|