Scheme New Year

[linus!ramsdell@Mitre-Bedford]

   Today at 16:23 GMT is the winter solstice.  I would like
to take this opportunity to make public interesting information
on Scheme gathered this solar year.
   The sad news from Yale is there has been a drastic reduction 
in funding for T.  Yale seems to be happy leaving Scheme
development to MIT, Indiana, UCLA and TI.
   The rest is good news.  In MITRE's continuing search for a
Lisp Machine with reliable software and hardware, we have been
looking into TI's Explorer.  It is not known if TI's software 
is any better than Symbolic's (how can it be worse!), but
various sources have informed me that Scheme research is active
at TI.  There has been no commitment to releasing Scheme as a
product, but the saleman told me that companies such as
A. D. Little have also expressed interest in Scheme for the
Explorers.  Maybe market forces will make Scheme popular in the
same manor Pascal became popular.
   MITRE was visited by salesmen from Expertelligence selling their
version of Common Lisp.  Their Common Lisp was not interesting,
however, they seem committed to releasing Scheme for the Macintosh
sometime in 1985.  I think the most important way to advance the
acceptance of Scheme is by making it availiable on a Mac.  In
combination with Abelson and Sussman's excellent book "Structure
and Interpretation of Computer Programs", many courses will be
taught using Scheme.  I know that influential Profs. at Harvard
are willing to use Abelson and Sussman if Scheme is availiable
on the Mac.  My only worry about Scheme on the Mac is that
Expertelligence does not have the expertice to make a quality
product.  Any Scheme hackers that want a job ought to check
out Expertelligence.

To days with more light for Scheme.

John