<story><title>Chicken Scheme 5.0</title><url>http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/chicken-users/2018-11/msg00006.html</url><text>CHICKEN is a compiler for the Scheme programming language. It produces portable and efficient C and supports the R5RS and R7RS (work in progress) standards, and many extensions.  More info at https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.call-cc.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;p&gt;A new major version has just been released.  See the announcement message here: http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lists.nongnu.org&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;html&amp;#x2F;chicken-users&amp;#x2F;2018-11&amp;#x2F;msg00006.html</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ziotom78</author><text>Wow! It has been almost 6-7 years since I used Chicken Scheme, but I have fond memories of it. I wrote a program to automatize the creation of scientific reports in the Planck&amp;#x2F;LFI project [1]. The purpose was to quickly scan a large number of maps and power spectra produced by the data analysis pipeline, detect any weirdness in the data, and create a report in HTML format. The report included several tables and plots.&lt;p&gt;The ability to natively encode HTML in Scheme syntax was the main reason why I chose Chicken Scheme: LISP is perfect for creating HTML programmatically. However, while using Chicken Scheme, I discovered a few other features that were big timesavers:&lt;p&gt;(1) The simplicity of its FFI was incredible. It was immediate to link existing C libraries we were using in the Planck project, as Chicken Scheme compiles to C.&lt;p&gt;(2) Eggs were a joy to use. It was trivial to download and install them, compared to the amount of work needed for the usual C and Fortran libraries needed in our field (Lapack, Blas, HEALPix, etc.)&lt;p&gt;(3) Several tools were available: documentation generators (I don&amp;#x27;t remember the name of the one I used, but I remember the good looks of the documents it produced), seamless integration in Emacs, etc.&lt;p&gt;(4) Developers were super-friendly. I did not need to ask questions very often, but the few times I had to do so, I found them responsive and happy to help.&lt;p&gt;(5) The fact that the compiler produces an executable made deployment quite easy: once I verified that the necessary dynamic libraries were available, I compiled the code using Chicken Scheme on my laptop and then copied the executable on the server hosting the data to analyze.&lt;p&gt;Congratulations to the team for this new release!&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Planck_(spacecraft)#Low_Frequency_Instrument&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Planck_(spacecraft)#Low_Freque...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Chicken Scheme 5.0</title><url>http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/chicken-users/2018-11/msg00006.html</url><text>CHICKEN is a compiler for the Scheme programming language. It produces portable and efficient C and supports the R5RS and R7RS (work in progress) standards, and many extensions.  More info at https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.call-cc.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;p&gt;A new major version has just been released.  See the announcement message here: http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lists.nongnu.org&amp;#x2F;archive&amp;#x2F;html&amp;#x2F;chicken-users&amp;#x2F;2018-11&amp;#x2F;msg00006.html</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Reisen</author><text>One of the best intros to generational garbage collection is on chicken internals[1]. If you&amp;#x27;ve ever wondered about GCs I thoroughly recommend giving the article a read, it&amp;#x27;s full of interesting asides as well.&lt;p&gt;I think I would use chicken more but usually when reaching for scheme it seems to be because I want something embeddable. Even so, extremely excited about this release!&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.more-magic.net&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;internals-gc.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.more-magic.net&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;internals-gc.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>