Why should we learn Scheme?

I have been mulling over learning lisp seriously and using it for real projects. But I never could motivate myself enough to write something worthwhile in Common Lisp or Scheme. But after looking at Arc, I am impressed. The current version of Arc is written in Scheme. I have been a strong python advocate. But after looking at Arc, I am impressed. Not so much with Arc itself but with Scheme. I was browsing through Arc's code and found that it was surprisingly readable.

I am now determined to learn Scheme and contribute to Arc. Maybe, somebody would write a Arc -> Metal compiler but I like the fact that Arc has first been written in Scheme. It is sort of like PyPy or Rubinius. But I guess it is a natural thing to do in the Scheme world. I have two more books on my reading list. I have already started with Teach yourself Scheme in Fixnum days and I plan to grok SICP as well.

Keep coding. You know I am. :-)

Hello Arc

There has been quite some ruckus on the blogosphere about Arc. I have just downloaded it and finished reading through the tutorial. I like it. I am sure that features like Unicode will get added. However, I would like to see the standard library. How can I do FFI? Database interfaces? May be they are already there but I still don't see them yet. In the meanwhile, here is an interesting snipped of Arc for everybody who is pondering about Life, Universe and Everything.

arc> (reduce + (cons 6 (map [* 4 _] (keep odd '(1 2 3 4 5)))))
42

Keep coding.