[Scheme-reports] ratification vote for R7RS-small

[David Banks <amoebae@x>]

Full name: David Banks

Location: UK

Statement of interest:
I have been a Scheme user for around eight years and have followed the SRFI,
R6RS and now R7RS processes avidly for this period.  I have made small
contributions to the PLT (now Racket), Mosh, and SISC implementation
communities.  I use Scheme for all my personal code and whenever I have a
choice.  I work professionally in the IT industry and have previously had
occasion to use Scheme in my paid work.  I wish to see Scheme satisfy its
intentions as a truly "general purpose" language, and to see its fractious
community unite, without losing the qualities that make it unique.

Vote: Yes

Rationale:
This standard is clearly superior to R5RS for practical work simply because of
the presence of the module system.  I am also very happy that exceptions made it
in.  The omission of a hygiene-bending macro system is tough to take but
probably wise.  DEFINE-LIBRARY rankles a bit as a name but it's probably the
best compromise.  The longer boolean literals have grown on me, having detested
them the first time I saw them.  Very happy that LET-VALUES and CASE-LAMBDA made
it.

For the record, I do not think that the community (as a whole; this does not
refer to the working group) approached R6RS in a constructive way, and believe
that its rejection is due more to FUD than to its weaknesses as a standard.  The
arduous task of producing the WG1 draft does credit to the working group and I
would like to extend my thanks to them for undertaking this labour, requiring a
great deal of both patience and vision.

The only point of the charter that I demur on is the ability for the Scheme
specified by WG1 to form a coherent base for WG2.  This is a difficult
requirement and here I have to defer to the experience and extensive
argumentation of implementors on the list to know that we have not painted
ourselves into a corner.  It's important to remember now that the success of
R7RS as a whole is predicated on WG2.

-- 
David Banks  <amoebae@x>

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