From: ci123@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (T. Kurt Bond)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: Compilation on SPARC
Date: 12 Oct 1992 16:25:57 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: ci123@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (T. Kurt Bond)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, bevan@cs.man.ac.uk (Stephen J Bevan) says:
>In article <BvxAwM.DKw@cs.psu.edu> 
schwartz@roke.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz) writes:
>   Only a very small number of scheme developers seem interested in using
>   scheme do to actual systems and application programming.  (If I'm
>   wrong about that, post lots of messages here!)
>
>I use Scheme to write applications (though none are currently
>commercial).  The one I'm currently hacking reads a (binary) abstract
>syntax tree produced by a C program and resolves references[1] (i.e.
>given any reference in the file, it finds the definition).  Although
>the files I'm reading can be more than a Mb, I still find an
>interpreter[2] quick enough for the task, at least as far as development
>goes anyway.

I also use Scheme to write applications (generally small), 
which though not directly commercial 
are often used to build or support our commercial applications.  For
instance, I've written an application that allow us to design data entry
screens for character-cell terminals using a WYSIWYG interface; the
application then generates source code to handle dislay of the screen and
data and allow data entry and movement among fields.  In this case I've
found that an interpreter{1} is quick enough, which is not surprising since
the application spends most of its time waiting for user input and updating
the screen.  However, the part that generates the code is also fast enough.

>I occasionally compile programs using T, however for the 8Mb machine
>that I mainly use, the speed advantage of compiling is nearly always
>outweighed by the excessive paging that occurs.  I would guess that
>the same would occur with MIT Scheme as it is approximately the same
>size.  Therefore, although they are fine compilers, they just aren't
>very useful to _me_.

I don't use any of the easily available compilers because they don't run on
VMS, even when they do VAX code generation.  On the other hand, several of
the interpreters port easily to VMS, probably because they have a less
ambitious goal in the first place.

[...]
>* I think the current Scheme definition has too many procedures in it.
>  You can therefore guess that I'm less than happy with systems such
>  as T and MIT Scheme which seem to be closer to Common Lisp that
>  Scheme to me (the perceived of size/power ratio of Scheme was one of
>  the reasons I gave up Common Lisp to use Scheme)

But MIT Scheme (and T, from what I can tell) seem to have larger goals than
just implementing the language; they seem to aim to provide a programming
environment, and I think that's where a lot of the size comes from.

[Digression: Will GAMBIT Scheme run on your machine?  It's *much* smaller
than MIT Scheme; certainly I had no space problems when I was running it 
(version 1.7 and 1.8) on a 4 Megabyte Mac SE/30.  If only it ran on more 
than just 68xxx based machines.]

{1}  I'm using Aubrey Jaffer's SCM running on VAX/VMS, extended to use
VMS's SMG Screen Management routines for managing character-cell terminals.
Extending it was easiy to do.

--
T.K. Bond