Folks may also be interested that this version, 6.0, supports Crunch(although Crunch itself has not been declared a 1.0 status, currently @ .993), which is a compiler for a statically typed subset of Scheme R7RS. (https://wiki.call-cc.org/eggref/6/crunch)
valorzard 3 hours ago [-]
CRUNCH is really cool, I helped make it work better on Windows (although it requires a bit of setup)
trescenzi 4 hours ago [-]
I started playing with Chicken over the weekend because I was looking for a scheme that you could build binaries of and that had a lively ecosystem. I've really enjoyed it. So far I've mostly played with web stuff. Built a wrapper around makemkvcon for ripping some dvds I've been meaning to rip that'll do a little bit of automatic naming of output using the tv db.
I was slightly worried that I'd start using v5 and then v6 would come out but it looked like they'd been working on it for a while so I figured I'd have some time on v5. Turns out I was wrong!
orsenthil 5 hours ago [-]
For an introduction:
CHICKEN is a compiler that translates Scheme source files into C, which in turn can be fed to a C compiler to generate a standalone executable. An interpreter is also available and can be used as a scripting environment or for testing programs before compilation.
rtpg 27 minutes ago [-]
does this mean that you can't do `eval`-like things in "production" systems?
rmunn 4 hours ago [-]
For those who use Chicken Scheme: what made you pick it over other Lisps? What are some things it does particularly well?
hellcow 51 minutes ago [-]
The eggs are great. For instance I can be up and running building an SDL2 game or make a webserver quickly.
It has good emacs support with geiser-chicken.
Because it compiles down to C the FFI provides a lot of nice ergonomics beyond what I get with Chez Scheme.
Error messages are actually useful with a stacktrace. Can't overstate this.
It supports optional type definitions which reduces the number of tests I need.
The docs are adequate, though I frequently add "MIT scheme" to my search queries. I wasn't able to get chicken-doc setup in NixOS, and the docs website has gone down on me a bunch lately. I wish Chicken had complete documentation available in an offline format, like a PDF.
whartung 3 hours ago [-]
The compiler. That’s the gem of the system.
The generated C is reasonably portable, so you can run Scheme programs on systems that “don’t run Scheme”.
ziotom78 2 hours ago [-]
Absolutely. And eggs too [1]: these are libraries provided by the community, very easy to import and use.
I was slightly worried that I'd start using v5 and then v6 would come out but it looked like they'd been working on it for a while so I figured I'd have some time on v5. Turns out I was wrong!
CHICKEN is a compiler that translates Scheme source files into C, which in turn can be fed to a C compiler to generate a standalone executable. An interpreter is also available and can be used as a scripting environment or for testing programs before compilation.
It has good emacs support with geiser-chicken.
Because it compiles down to C the FFI provides a lot of nice ergonomics beyond what I get with Chez Scheme.
Error messages are actually useful with a stacktrace. Can't overstate this.
It supports optional type definitions which reduces the number of tests I need.
The docs are adequate, though I frequently add "MIT scheme" to my search queries. I wasn't able to get chicken-doc setup in NixOS, and the docs website has gone down on me a bunch lately. I wish Chicken had complete documentation available in an offline format, like a PDF.
The generated C is reasonably portable, so you can run Scheme programs on systems that “don’t run Scheme”.
[1] https://wiki.call-cc.org/eggs
Congratulations to the team, Chicken Scheme is a little gem!