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Re: Ousterhout article on scripting applies to scheme

To: scsh@martigny.ai.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Ousterhout article on scripting applies to scheme
From: Franklin Chen <chen@adi.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 11:12:51 -0500 (EST)
Richard Coleman <coleman@math.gatech.edu> writes:
> I just read a new white paper written by John Ousterhout
> about scripting languages, called
> 
> Scripting: Higher-Level Programming for the 21st Century
> (available at http://www.sunlabs.com/people/john.ousterhout)
> 
> I would encourage everyone in the scheme community to grab
> a copy and read it (it's only 12 pages).
> 
> Although this paper primarily talks about tcl, perl, and
> visual basic, it seems the ideas in this paper definitely
> apply to scheme and scsh as well.

I've looked at the paper, and found it extremely misleading for its
omissions and factual inaccuracies.  In particular, I was baffled that
there was no mention _whatsoever_ of advanced languages such as
Scheme, ML, and Haskell--languages that to me seem most promising as
foundations for safe, efficient, and expressive prototyping/scripting
as well as general purpose programming.

If anyone is interested, I can go into detail about everything I found
misleading about Ousterhout's paper.  I encourage anyone else who
cares to do the same; perhaps an eventual unified response to
Ousterhout is called for.

-- 
Franklin Chen                     | chen@adi.com, http://www.adi.com/~chen/
Applied Dynamics International    | http://www.adi.com/
3800 Stone School Road            | Phone: (313) 973-1300
Ann Arbor, MI 48108-2499          | FAX: (313) 668-0012

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