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Comment by caslon | Hacker News Reader

No, not really.

    $ mit-scheme
    MIT/GNU Scheme running under GNU/Linux
    
    Type `^C' (control-C) followed by `H' to obtain information about interrupts.
    
    Copyright (C) 2014 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
    
    Image saved on Friday January 4, 2019 at 11:17:34 PM
      Release 9.2 || Microcode 15.3 || Runtime 15.7 || SF 4.41 || LIAR/C 4.118 || Edwin 3.116
    
    1 ]=>

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https://www.mail-archive.com/mit-scheme-devel@gnu.org/msg015...

https://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/scripts.html

MIT scheme does not love us as users. That's fine. That's entirely their decision of which this is one example. This aspect of the mit-scheme culture is a pretty significant hurdle to it gaining popularity. Probably one that was simply too big. I believe it has been replaced with python for 6.001 nowadays too.

Another example of the same mentality can be seen in the really great SICP video lectures. Jerry Sussman treats the audience like a compiler. He takes the view if he says it once correctly, successful communication of the idea is no longer his problem. That's a lot easier for the audience now we can rewind videos and listen to some small number of sentences again, and again until we get it. It's not exactly a fun way to learn things. It is also a massive contrast to the way say Larry Wall or Guido Van Rossum went about things. I've noticed since Perl ever single new language trumpets how friendly and /helpful/ the community is. I think that's probably pretty significant. This is not a criticism of Jerry, I don't know what his objectives with the language and SICP course were. Hard to get into is hard to get into whatever the reasons.

Windows is not even supported by MIT Scheme anymore.

There is also the #lang sicp for Racket that needs no modification from the code in the book, to my knowledge.

SICP language in racket lacks 1+ and -1+ (increment and decrement), last I checked. So it does still need some modification.

Are those actually used in the book?

But if needed, the user can write:

    (define (1+ x) (+ x 1))
    (define (1- x) (- x 1))

Although, I think, add1 and sub1 are more common nowadays.

Pretty sure that example comes from the first edition. #lang sicp is made to work with the second edition I assume.

Furthermore, to get an Emacs-like REPL (Edwin)

  1 ]=> (edit)

  ;Loading "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/mit- 
  scheme/lib/prx11.so"... done

I usually just open up a *scratch* buffer in emacs, and use ctrl-J to evaluate expressions.

I think my most common use case is for math (e.g. adding values that I extracted via some emacs keyboard macros).

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