29 Oct
2011
29 Oct
'11
9:54 p.m.
Of course, Scheme *is* Lisp rather than just part of
the family.
I don't really think that's fair. Scheme is a bit closer to the lambda
calculus and many - most? - Lisps in some respects, perhaps, but
identifying Lisp with the lambda calculus is ignoring the difference
between theory and implementation.
I consider Scheme one member of the Lisp family, but no more than that.
It makes some interesting and unusual choices; like most cases where
there are many different versions of something, Scheme is better at
some things and worse at others (as compared to either any other
particular member of the family or to a fictional generic "average"
implementation)....
One of the instructors [in a video], who was one of
the creators of
Scheme and so should know better than me, mentions in passing near
the beginning that the particular Lisp used in the course is known as
Scheme but only uses Lisp to refer to it from then on.
That hardly means much. An introductory course, especially one which
focuses on the theoretical aspects, or the common aspects, is likely to
do exactly that without any implication that it's fair to identify the
whole language family with any particular implementation. If I were to
teach a course on C, for example, I might well mention that the
compiler I'm using is whichever one it is, but then proceed to teach C,
rather than any particular implementation of C.
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