Geographic Location: Gloucester, England
Web Page URL: http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/
Statement of Interest:
Really, the question is: Why strive to make better programming languages at all? Isn’t something we already have, like Python or JavaScript or Haskell or Rust, good enough already? Why flog the dead horse of building a better Lisp?
Well, I think we (humanity) are complete amateurs at programming language design. When chemistry was this old, they were still trying to turn lead into gold; it took centuries of thought and experimentation to figure out the nature of atoms and how they combine. The programming languages we have today are a messy combination of deep theoretical ideas and ad-hoc accidental complexity piled into teetering towers, and people sit on those towers throwing rocks at the other towers, arguing about which language is best.
I feel that Scheme, despite being a minority language at best, is one of the closest things we have to practically applying some kind of “elemental theory” of the “atoms” of programming language design; so I think it’s vitally important that we continue to refine it to be the best core language it can be, then test that core by seeing just how slender and elegant (yet strong) we can build towers on top of it, until they rival the towers of mainstream languages. Not that I want a strong foundation to throw rocks at the others from, but because I hope we (as a species) can learn how to build better programming languages this way.
Full Name: Arthur A. Gleckler
Geographic Location: Sunnyvale, CA, USA
Affiliation: editor, Scheme Requests for Implementation
Public E-Mail Address: scheme@speechcode.com
Web Page URL: https://speechcode.com/
Statement of Interest:
I’ve been an avid fan of Scheme since 1984, when I first used it as part of the 6.001 Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs course at MIT. It has been my favorite programming language since then, and I use it for all my personal programming projects.
I TA-ed 6.001 several times under Profs. Abelson and Sussman. That taught me the great value of Scheme as a teaching language.
While I was an undergraduate, a staff member, and a graduate student at MIT, I spent many years working on MIT Scheme, including its interpreter, compiler, runtime system, debugger, and editor. I’ve also spent a lot of time working on my own, unfinished implementation of Scheme.
I followed the R4RS and R5RS standardization processes closely, participated in the IEEE Scheme standardization process in person, participated by email in the R6RS process, was an editor of R7RS Small, and have been contributing to R7RS Large as well.
I am eager for there to be a Scheme standard suitable for practical projects. I want Scheme to be the best compromise between the diamond-like jewel that it has been and the practical, everyday programming language that many of us have always wanted it to be.
Geographic Location: Vilnius, Lithuania
Statement of Interest:
My interest is to standardize a scheme r7rs version that would allow writing a wide range of applications without relying on non-portable / implementation specific extensions (sorry, I’m not sure if this counts as “stake in the Scheme standards process”). The SRFI process as it exists isn’t binding, as a user it’s not enough for a feature to exist merely as a SRFI if many implementations choose to not implement it. Some of the features I want for the standard to provide: pattern matching, more flexible macro system (preferably syntax-case), more elaborate file system api, multithreading, sockets, form of dynamic (/ generic) dispatch. Some of the features I’d approve of if standard would provide (although I recognize these can be more controversial, and I can live without them): introspection / reflection facilities, delimited continuations, C FFI facilities, some form of type annotations (while allowing implementations to choose if they are checked ahead of time or at runtime). When voting, as one of key points I intend to check is candidates’ stance on r6rs, particularly with regard to if their opinion is that scheme should be “easy” for implementers, or “easy” for users.
Geographic Location: West Lafayette, IN, USA
Public E-Mail Address: lucier@purdue.edu
Web Page URL: https://www.math.purdue.edu/~lucier/
Statement of Interest:
I’ve participated in development of the Scheme programming language at least since the Scheme meeting in Baltimore in 1998, where I presented a document outlining my views on how arithmetic should be implemented, concentrating on two topics (IEEE arithmetic, and operations mixing exact and inexact arithmetic). These topics continue to be of interest, most recently in adapting Kahan’s suggested implementation techniques for complex inverse trigonometric and hyperbolic functions to systems with mixed-exactness complex numbers.
I use (Gambit) Scheme for applications that are perhaps in the corners of the area of usual applications, which required additions or modifications/additions to either the Scheme implementation or the language itself:
numerical programs (numerical partial differential equations), for which I added the first experimental implementation of uniform f64 vectors to Gambit.
image processing, which led me to a multi-decade study of array processing algorithms in general.
computational number theory, for which I developed (under the direction of Marc Feeley) a new bignum library for Gambit that had novel algorithms for bignum multiplication and GCD (which beat the performance of GMP’s GCD algorithm of the time; after I corresponded with Niels M�ller, he integrated a version of the same algorithm into GMP).
I was also on the R7RS Small committee. (The experience made me appreciate the R6RS editors all the more.)
I expect my interest in how Scheme develops to continue.
Full Name: Daphne Preston-Kendal
Geographic Location: Berlin, Germany
Public E-Mail Address: dpk@nonceword.org
Statement of Interest:
As for many, Scheme was a revelation for me when I discovered it as a young, budding hacker: seeing how a programming language was built up in such a way that its most advanced features could clearly be defined in terms of its simplest ones, building everything on a simple lexical syntax. Now I am older, and hopefully wiser – my views on Scheme-related matters have evolved a lot over the years – but this basic idea continues to inform not only how I think about programming languages, but how I design systems in general.
Because my thinking on Scheme has evolved so much over the years, I can look back and see how I myself struggled to understand the value of certain features or ways of thinking about the language – I hope this gives me the ability to better understand the diverse viewpoints about the language within the community.
Geographic Location: Strasbourg, France, Europe
Affiliation: CNRS, IN2P3
Statement of Interest:
I have used Scheme since 2000. I turned to it out of frustration with the complexity of other languages, and it quickly became my language of choice for its clarity, expressive power, and simplicity. Scheme’s minimalism and orthogonality align perfectly with my philosophy of programming languages.
My work reflects this belief: I contributed to the R7RS small working group. I admit I have a strong preference for small, minimalist implementations that stay true to the language’s core principles. Additionally, I actively use Scheme in my work on the GNU Guix project, further deepening my practical engagement with the language and its ecosystem.
I am deeply interested in the future of Scheme. As a voter, I want to contribute to ensuring the language continues to evolve in a way that preserves its core values: simplicity, compositional, and practicality. I hope to bring my experience and passion to help shape its future, ensuring that Scheme remains both simple and powerful while addressing the needs of all users, new or experienced. I believe in fostering a collaborative and inclusive process, where technical decisions are made with a clear focus on the language’s foundational values.
Geographic Location: The Netherlands
Statement of Interest:
I’m a theoretical computer science student, and I thoroughly enjoy writing scheme in my free time. I have written (or contributed to) a couple of scheme projects, and would like to contribute to the scheme development landscape. That is why I am slowly getting more involved in the development of schemes, in particular guile and hoot. I’ve been following the r7rs standardisation project for a while now, am very excited for what it may bring, which is why I would like to vote on who steers the scheme project.
Geographic Location: South Orange, NJ
Affiliation: Seton Hall University
Public E-Mail Address: jason.hemann@gmail.com
Web Page URL: https://www.shu.edu/profiles/hemannja.html
Statement of Interest:
I program and research in Scheme, have a lineage in the Scheme family of programming languages, and I have something of a place in the academic side of the scheme community. I think there’s a decent number of folks in the community who would recognize me as a member. I have published at least one library that became a SRFI. I have assisted in the generation of some of the academic work-product describing how implementations come closer to achieving a synthesis of R6 and R7s compliance.
Geographic Location: São Paulo, SP, Brazil
Affiliation: Universidade Federal do ABC
Statement of Interest:
I have had an interest in programming languages for several years. I work as teacher and researcher at a brazilian university, and there I have taught Programming Paradigms for some years, using Scheme; later I have proposed “Semantics of Programming Languages” as a new discipline, where Scheme is one of the languages used as an example. I also contribute regularly to STklos Scheme, being the second-largest contributor, with a significant volume of commits and a substantial impact on the project’s development: fixed numerous issues, implemented several SRFIs, optimized the core, and proposed several new ideas. I also eventually contribute to other Scheme implementations. As a contributor to a Scheme implementation, I of course have interest in the standardization process.
Geographic Location: Pirkanmaa, Finland
Web Page URL: https://iki.fi/retropikzel
Statement of Interest:
I have been programmign in Scheme around 6 years. I have multiple big projects, and it has long been the only language I program in on my free time. My interest in Scheme standandization process is to vote for candidate who IMO keeps portability in mind. And keeps the backwards compability breaking changes into a minimum. I program for standard, not any specific implementation and any portability issue effects all my projects. Which usually try to improve the state of the whole Scheme ecosystem instead of targetting specific implementation. I would like to see Scheme ecosystem flourish and R7RS-large to hopefully bring more unity.
Geographic Location: Montréal, Canada
Affiliation: Université de Montréal
Public E-Mail Address: feeley@iro.umontreal.ca
Web Page URL: https://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~feeley
Statement of Interest:
I have been working with Scheme for the past 40 years and have made numerous contributions to the language and its community. These include authoring several Scheme-related academic papers; developing the Gambit, Ribbit, and try.scheme.org implementations; teaching courses that use Scheme; contributing as the author of several SRFIs; serving as the initial editor of R6RS; participating as a member of the outgoing Scheme Language Steering Committee; serving on the Scheme Workshop Steering Committee; and organizing the Scheme Workshop on two occasions.
I have invested significant effort in promoting Scheme and in fostering unity among the different factions of the Scheme community. For these reasons the election of the Scheme Language steering committee is highly relevant to my activities.
Geographic Location: Augsburg, Germany
Affiliation: University of Augsburg
Statement of Interest:
I am a mathematician who has specialised in algebraic geometry and am working at the University of Augsburg, Germany.
I have been a continuous user of the Scheme language since 2013, as a programmer, implementer, and teacher. In fact, Scheme has become my favourite programming language to express my ideas. For more than 10 years, I have been active in the Scheme community. Numerous SRFIs have been authored and implemented by me. I have written and open-sourced an expander for the R6RS/R7RS library and macro language as an application of R7RS. I have also written a Scheme compiler in Scheme (not yet open-sourced) that produces native machine code.
My understanding of the Scheme programming language, its implementation techniques, and its pitfalls is solid. I have a great interest in the Scheme language, and I hope it stays the jewel it has been known for, and would like to see the last rough edges being polished away as well.
Geographic Location: Bay Area, CA, USA
Affiliation: Self
Public E-Mail Address: mark.friedman@gmail.com
Statement of Interest:
My background is in programming language design and implementation, and I was deeply immersed in the Scheme world back in the 1990’s, especially in my time as a Research Scientist at the MIT A.I. lab working on the MIT Scheme system. Fast forward about 20 years, when I cofounded what is now MIT App Inventor and used Scheme to represent its core intermediate language and implement its runtime environment.
I have recently been working on a a full R7RS-small standard implementation of Scheme written in JavaScript, as part of a longer range project to build a visual programming system built on a solid Scheme semantic base, for C.S. learners.
Geographic Location: New York, New York
Public E-Mail Address: maplant@protonmail.com
Web Page URL: https://www.maplant.com
Statement of Interest:
I have been working on an implementation of R6RS scheme (scheme-rs) that should have its first version released by the 15th. It passes >2000 of the tests in the R6RS test suite and is (nearly, quasiquoting and rationalize code were taken from other projects) written completely from scratch. Besides R6RS, it includes some features that I would expect in R7RS-large, including delimited continuations. I therefore have a very strong understanding of implementing state-of-the-art Scheme and have a very strong opinion of what should be included in R7RS large. I’m not one of enough of an ego to nominate myself to the Steering Committee, but I would very much like to participate in the process in any way possible.
Geographic Location: Atlanta, GA, USA
Public E-Mail Address: memoryhole@mcgoron.com
Web Page URL: https://peter.mcgoron.com
Statement of Interest:
I am interested in the Scheme standardization process because I hope that an expanded Scheme standard will satisfy those who want a “large” Scheme while also being compatible (as much as is realistic) with code written for a “small” Scheme, like the current R7RS-Small. I like the flexibility that Scheme has in implementation method. I am also particularly excited about the macro facilities of the upcoming large language.
I am a user of CHICKEN Scheme and contribute eggs (external libraries) to it, particularly ports of SRFIs.
Geographic Location: Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Public E-Mail Address: philip@philipmcgrath.com
Web Page URL: https://philipmcgrath.com
Statement of Interest:
I am a regular contributor to Racket and, more sporadically, to Chez Scheme. I maintain the Guix packages of both implementations and libraries that use them, through which I also have experience with Guile.
While I am not an active participant in WG2, I have submitted some comments on R7RS Large drafts. I have also been involved in discussions about a potential minor revision of R6RS to address some infelicities and improve compatibility: I have suggested that any such effort should seek a charter from the Scheme Steering Committee.
I am interested in promoting the exchange of ideas across different parts of the Scheme community. I am also interested in reducing barriers to interoperability and portability.
Geographic Location: North East England, UK
Web Page URL: https://mastodon.online/@mnemenaut
Statement of Interest:
Although my first substantial attempt at programming was a list-processing library (for Fortran II, sixty years ago), I had no experience with Scheme before encountering R^6RS: it’s now my goto PL for research and home-school teaching. As the “author (transcriber)” of marked-up versions of the Lambda Papers available at https://research.scheme.org/, I am interested in foundations of computation and how they can be explained via Scheme. But to avoid ossification and maintain a vibrant “community at large”, standardization needs to emphasize Scheme’s special ability to incorporate many paradigms without “piling feature on top of feature”.
Geographic Location: Gaithersburg, MD, USA
Statement of Interest:
I have been an active Lisp and Scheme user/implementer for over three decades. I wrote the Vital Lisp compiler (1993, now in Autodesk) and authored three small Scheme implementations: SXM (~2000), #F (~2015), and most recently Skint (2024). In my daily work I rely heavily on Scheme as the primary language for prototyping complex symbolic algorithms in the NLP domain; some of these algorithms remain in Scheme indefinitely, others are eventually rewritten or compiled to C. I am also an active participant in the SRFI process, having authored SRFIs 251, 257, and 264. My interest in the Scheme standardization process is straightforward: I want it to help secure Scheme’s long-term viability as a language with clean, unencumbered semantics, readable and composable algorithms, and rich opportunities for optimization. I have watched too many other languages chase short-term popularity by accumulating conflicting features to satisfy transient constituencies, only to collapse once the hype moves on. I do notwant that fate for Scheme. I would like the language to still be alive, elegant, and useful fifty years from now, not a historical curiosity sustained only by heroic maintenance efforts that no one will be around to provide. Careful, principled standardization is the best way I know to make that future possible.
Geographic Location: Trenton, ME, USA
Web Page URL: http://chaw.eip10.org/
Statement of Interest:
I have been using Scheme since the early 1990s for both work and pleasure. I teach computer science at the university level and conduct research in computing and data systems, and Scheme is always my first choice for my own programming related to my work or other tasks. As such, I have a strong practical interest in seeing the Scheme ecosystem and community grow and adapt to new programming environments (e.g., Web browsers) and tasks (e.g., interface with the ever evolving authentication schemes such as OAuth2). Scheme is also important to me on a personal and emotional level, since some of my fondest computer science memories involve Scheme and SICP. My hope for Scheme’s evolution is that it will remain true to its roots of minimality of features and resist bloat in the core language definition but also that it will make it easy to portably and reliably use a large ecosystem of libraries and modules for diverse tasks, especially systems-oriented work. The times I am unable to use Scheme (easily) for my work seem to invariably be those when interfacing with some other system (typically network service) requires libraries not available for Scheme.
Geographic Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Statement of Interest:
I became interested in Scheme in the mid 1980s, and when I took on a teaching appointment at the University of British Columbia in 1988, I worked to transition the introductory CS sequence to something like 6.001. This resulted in a textbook, The Schematics of Computation, in collaboration with Jim Little. I have voted in favour of both R6RS and R7RS, and am currently a member of the R7RS-Large Working Group.
My hope is that Scheme will continue to be both a well-founded teaching language and a practical language for building useful computer programs. Our new SC will be essential in guiding future language development to meet these criteria.
Geographic Location: Rochester, NY, USA
Public E-Mail Address: wcm@sigwinch.xyz
Web Page URL: http://www.sigwinch.xyz/index.html
Statement of Interest:
I began learning Scheme in 2016, at which point I considered myself a confirmed C programmer. Scheme–and SICP–woke me from my pedantic slumbers. In recent years I’ve mostly programmed for fun and edification, which has given me a preference for elegant (some would say unrealistic) programming languages. At times I’ve preferred other languages to Scheme, but again and again I’ve come back, each time with greater admiration for Scheme’s design. “Its clear semantics and lack of pedantics” (John Ramsdell) have made it my favorite tool for exploring computational ideas, even if I later translate those ideas to other languages.
I started contributing to the SRFI project in 2020. Through debates with more experienced programmers on the mailing lists and through the sometimes-difficult process of writing portable SRFI implementations, I learned more about the Reports and the differences between Scheme implementations than I ever wanted to. The value of a comprehensive standard to improve the current hyper-diverse situation was evident. At first I aligned myself with R7RS, since I’d interacted with the R7RS editors and had also heard bad things about R6RS. I gradually learned to ignore the rumors and to evaluate the Reports for myself.
I now appreciate both R6RS and R7RS and would like to see them unified by a future standard, if possible. I strongly advocate for “small Scheme” (by which I mean a language somewhere between R5RS Scheme and ISO C, not somewhere between the untyped λ-calculus and ISO C++), or at least modular Scheme, in which optional libraries provide the language’s more convenient features. I would like future formulations of Scheme to be as compact and comprehensible as those of the past. I would also like to see the warts of the older Reports cured.
Geographic Location: Guangdong, China
Statement of Interest:
What’s remarkable about the Scheme standardization process is that, in the world that software development and computer science believe in “move fast and break things” and chasing for short-term benefits, there is still a group of people who are dedicated to specifying high quality standard for a programming language, The rules they follow doesn’t depend on the popularity of specific language features, but on the first-principle that “remove restriction of language”. I’d like to do my part for that.