The Scheme Programming Language

Published on 08 April 2018 (Updated: 15 May 2023)

Welcome to the Scheme page! Here, you'll find a description of the language as well as a list of sample programs in that language.

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Description

Once again, I took to Wikipedia to learn more about the new language.

According to Wikipedia, Scheme is the minimalist branch of Lisp. The only indicator of minimalism in Scheme I can find is the fact that it features only 23 s-expressions. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any additional information on what makes scheme so simple. Let me know in the comments.

In terms of features, Scheme leverages lambda calculus, lexical scoping, tail recursion, and first-class continuations. To be honest, I had to research lexical scoping. Turns out, lexical scoping is just a fancy name for static scoping. In other words, variables only exist within the block of text that they're defined. In contrast, Common Lisp supports both lexical and dynamic scoping.

Despite Scheme appearing back in 1970, it's still used today for primarily educational purposes. For instance, many universities use Scheme in their introductory programming courses. Beyond education, Scheme is mainly used by hobbyists for scripting purposes.

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