that was an enjoyable interview. I dabbled in chicken for a bit and still maintain a soft spot for it, it's probably the nicest of the pure schemes I've tried using, though in the overall lisp family I fill prefer racket.
Just want to show my appreciation for your contributions to CHICKEN. I used it for my BSc at version 4.something and only recently decided to pick it up again, using pure r7rs mode on 5.4, for my pet language. It's got a bit of the characteristic jank of C-compilation, but it's also everything and more you'd want from a Scheme.
Also I like a nuanced assessment of Clojure, particularly of its social impact being its most important feature. It's heartening to see people rally around such a strange little creature.
I guess I could be non-lazy and look this up but in the spirit of engaging: Does CHICKEN still use the "Cheney on the MTA" approach where it compiles to C and implements continuations with CPS and dynamic allocations with alloca on the C stack, treating stack overflows as a trigger for stack-copying GC? Assuming I'm remembering that correctly. If so, how has that worked out over the years? I mostly stopped using or following Scheme in the mid-2000s, so the quirky compilation approach is what I remember it for the most, as a compiler nerd.
zem | 21 days ago
that was an enjoyable interview. I dabbled in chicken for a bit and still maintain a soft spot for it, it's probably the nicest of the pure schemes I've tried using, though in the overall lisp family I fill prefer racket.
tentacloids | 21 days ago
Just want to show my appreciation for your contributions to CHICKEN. I used it for my BSc at version 4.something and only recently decided to pick it up again, using pure r7rs mode on 5.4, for my pet language. It's got a bit of the characteristic jank of C-compilation, but it's also everything and more you'd want from a Scheme.
Also I like a nuanced assessment of Clojure, particularly of its social impact being its most important feature. It's heartening to see people rally around such a strange little creature.
pervognsen | 21 days ago
I guess I could be non-lazy and look this up but in the spirit of engaging: Does CHICKEN still use the "Cheney on the MTA" approach where it compiles to C and implements continuations with CPS and dynamic allocations with alloca on the C stack, treating stack overflows as a trigger for stack-copying GC? Assuming I'm remembering that correctly. If so, how has that worked out over the years? I mostly stopped using or following Scheme in the mid-2000s, so the quirky compilation approach is what I remember it for the most, as a compiler nerd.
lcapaldo | 21 days ago
This is mentioned in the interview above in the answer to the question of “Why CHICKEN?”
sjamaan | 20 days ago
It still does. It works wonderfully well as a relatively cheap way to offer full continuations without caveats
sjamaan | 20 days ago
Thank you @veqq for asking good questions and fleshing this out into a coherent story!