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Ticket 484: The draft avoids making hard decisions

2013-07-07 03:20:44
WG1 - Core
alexshinn
major
cowan
wontfix
source
closed
2013-05-12 22:26:06
defect

Sam Tobin-Hochstadt writes:

The draft makes a concerted effort to avoid hard decisions that might alienate any of the community¹. As a result, it is less of a standard than a description of the current balkanized state of the Scheme community. If real standardization of Scheme is impossible, then we should avoid trying, just as we do not put effort into a single standard describing both Scheme and Common Lisp.

¹With the notable exception of the majority of the community that favored R6RS.

This is another example of the "all or nothing" fallacy. A standard is inherently a compromise. A rigid "my way or the highway" standard, especially a complex one, means that only a few implementers will be able to provide it, thus limiting the scope of user choices.

The draft often expresses its decisions conditionally. For example, if a certain module is provided by an implementation, it must export exactly the identifiers specified by the standard, and give their values the standard meanings. This is not at all the sum of what existing Schemes are doing: indeed, I doubt if any Scheme other than Chibi and Sagittarius specify exactly the same identifiers for any of their modules.

summaryDThe draft avoids making hard decisions
resolutionwontfix
statusnewclosed

The WG decided by unanimous consent to take no action on this ticket.