Scheme and Dylan

[Steve Strassmann <straz@cambridge.apple.com>]

>Date: Fri, 26 Jun 92 14:33:32 EST
>From: cfry@MIT.EDU (Christopher Fry)
>To: Steve Strassmann <straz@cambridge.apple.com>
>Subject: Re: RE: MCL Framework & Directions
>Cc: Dave Lucky <76557.704@CompuServe.COM>, info-mcl@cambridge.apple.com
>
>>Dylan, however, is not aimed at the Lisp market. It's aimed at the current 
>>market for static languages. We would definitely consider Dylan a failure 
>>if it only stole support from the lisp community and had no impact on 
>>the rest of the world. We think there are compelling reasons for a static
>>programmer to seriously consider switching to Dylan, and we'll do everything
>>we can to get them to do so!
>
>Straz, I hope you're right.  But why does Dylan have a better shot at it than
>Scheme, which is VERY similar to Dylan in  many technical and philosophic ways?
>Scheme has been around now for 10? years and obviously hasn't won many converts from C.
>There's even been a Scheme on the Mac for many years that didn't take off.

I think it's not fair to criticize Scheme that way. Scheme has different 
goals than industrial popularity and it achieves those goals quite successfully.

We think Dylan has a better shot at industry because we designed it that
way from the start, on both technical and marketing grounds.