Grant Rettke <grettke@gmail.com> writes:

> Lately I've been trying to read more about people's arguments both for
> and against R6RS, and in the process of doing so, I've ended up
> reading a lot about people's take on R4RS.
>
> From what I can gather, R4RS is really quite good. In fact, I get the
> impression that it is well loved as I see different Scheme code-bases
> being written for R4RS.
>
> R4RS only suggested macros, though, and didn't include them in the
> standard. Why then, did they get added to the standard in R5RS?
>
> Macros are powerful, but did Scheme need them? Who were the
> proponents, and opponents, and why?
>
> How might Scheme look had it not gone down the macro path? Would
> records have been added?
>
> Since the contributors to R4RS and R5RS are virtually identical,
> probably there wasn't a schism, but, macros seem like a "big" addition.

Macros were invented in 1963, and are an important consequence of
McCarthy's code=data equation.

Any language that hasn't lisp-equivalent macros is a shame, and not
worth is weight in bits.

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/

"Debugging? Klingons do not debug! Our software does not coddle the
weak."