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Jay Glascoe <jglascoe@jay.giss.nasa.gov> writes: > <don asbestos suit> Well that shouldn't be necessary. > Scheme is weird. OK, I'll agree with that one. Compared to the non-portable assemblers people program with, scheme is most unusual. > Although it's weakly typed, it's not a VHLL like Perl/Python. I detect an incorrect application of the contrapositive. Perl/Python not like scheme. Perl/Python are VHLL's. Does _not_ imply that scheme is not a VHLL. I don't see any actual reasons why you think that scheme is not a VHLL. (There are some reasons that are worthy of discussion, but you didn't mention any). > In my experience, functional style Scheme code is concise and, unless > you're careful, slow. This is an attribute of a particular implementation, not an intrinsic property of the language. Let me assure you that there are screaming fast scheme implementations out there, that can beat C in numerical code in certain cases, even when the programmer uses a functional style. Search DejaNews for the postings of Siskind on comp.lang.scheme. > otoh, imperative Scheme is usually about half the size of comparable > C code (a loop is a loop, a car is a car...), and it's about 3/4 the > size if don't count the C declarations. Once you start writing more scheme/lisp, I would expect that your scheme programs will start to be 3-5 times smaller than the same C program. Yes I mean 3-5 times. I hope you continue to learn about scheme; it will expand your programming horizons. Grab a copy of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, and go. -russ -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footsteps of giants.