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)
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.
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!
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 including its eggs in an offline format, like a PDF.
In many benchmarks, Racket is significantly faster than many other Scheme implementations, including Chicken: https://ecraven.github.io/r7rs-benchmarks/ This is because it is now based on Chez.
Well, SBCL can just use sources just fine. On Guile not being fast enough, it got a JIT since version 3 and it can be pretty fast. It must be, you know, because if not Guix would be even slower.
I only used Chicken for a short time, because of a UTF-8 bug it had/has, but I always liked Chicken's docs. They seem to be written with care and often make things understandable. When I look up Scheme things and don't understand something, sometimes I specifically go for the Chicken Scheme docs, to see if I understand its explanation.
ngl this is a massive update full R7Rs support UTF-8 strings and they finally ditched blobs for bytevectors the closure reuse otpimization sounds interesting too ngl
Uhm. I'm divided. Common Lisp it's the weird cousin, bloated at first but in the end you get SBCL, ECL or CCL and almost everything will work the same. With Scheme, you need to instal SRFI's to complete SICP exercises and then there's R5RS and R7RS.
You have no way to run Hypergiant under Guile. In Common Lisp, tons of packages for QuickLisp/UltraLisp will run on SBCL, CCL and ECL with ease.
In the end Scheme+Dependencies can be more convoluted than a subset of Common Lisp (you can avoid CLOS if you don't need it for instance).
Scheme SRFIs make Scheme a much bigger language while also making it painful to use because you have to research which SRFI are implemented in your scheme variant then map those SRFI numbers to what they actually do then you usually need read the raw SRFI because that's the only documentation around.
R7RS is going on 14 years old and there's still no R7RS-large either. They really need to just take the critical SFRIs, give them names and proper documentation, then call them R7RS-large and move the current work to a future R8RS.
I've never really heard of installing SRFIs (could be my ignorance); do you mean importing them? Or is installing SRFI implementations as their own packages really common? (Haven't really tried R7.)
The anti-R6/R7 folks (or what I've heard) won't see a problem so long as you can use CL to build fancy serious software, which lets Scheme stay small and simple for education. (Of course ideally you'd be able to do any SICP exercise on a Scheme implementation out of the box, though.)
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)
CRUNCH is really cool, I helped make it work better on Windows (although it requires a bit of setup)
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.
does this mean that you can't do `eval`-like things in "production" systems?
IIRC not compiled (you can include the interpreter).
But then Scheme was always less EVAL-friendly of the lisps
I'm not seeing the less friendly... Eval, and sandboxing eval, are builtin features of the Scheme standard.
It has eval but it lacks reader macros (or at least it did thirty years ago) which is what makes eval useful on lisp2 systems.
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!
How would it be for a 2D game?
I was eagerly waiting for this release, which brings full Unicode support.
Congratulations to the team, Chicken Scheme is a little gem!
For those who use Chicken Scheme: what made you pick it over other Lisps? What are some things it does particularly well?
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 including its eggs in an offline format, like a PDF.
What about Gambit? Perhaps it's a better, optimizing compiler but the built-in library is rather minimalist?
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”.
Absolutely. And eggs too [1]: these are libraries provided by the community, very easy to import and use.
[1] https://wiki.call-cc.org/eggs
What happens if you try to run Python eggs under Chicken? Do you get Roko's Basilisk? :-)
Pythons are too cold to hatch Chicken eggs, and viceversa
Self-contained, compact, compiled, fast, ready to use.
SBCL is not compact and its "image" concept is not universally liked by everyone.
Guile and Racket are not fast (nor compact).
Chez Scheme is not "ready to use".
In many benchmarks, Racket is significantly faster than many other Scheme implementations, including Chicken: https://ecraven.github.io/r7rs-benchmarks/ This is because it is now based on Chez.
It is certainly not compact, though.
Would be interesting to see how Crunch [0][1] does on that benchmark. Any plans to add it to the benchmark?
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49252127
[1] https://wiki.call-cc.org/eggref/6/crunch
Well, SBCL can just use sources just fine. On Guile not being fast enough, it got a JIT since version 3 and it can be pretty fast. It must be, you know, because if not Guix would be even slower.
Why do people use chicken over gambit? Is it due to chicken’s larger ego system and eggs, or is there more?
I only used Chicken for a short time, because of a UTF-8 bug it had/has, but I always liked Chicken's docs. They seem to be written with care and often make things understandable. When I look up Scheme things and don't understand something, sometimes I specifically go for the Chicken Scheme docs, to see if I understand its explanation.
ngl this is a massive update full R7Rs support UTF-8 strings and they finally ditched blobs for bytevectors the closure reuse otpimization sounds interesting too ngl
Uhm. I'm divided. Common Lisp it's the weird cousin, bloated at first but in the end you get SBCL, ECL or CCL and almost everything will work the same. With Scheme, you need to instal SRFI's to complete SICP exercises and then there's R5RS and R7RS.
You have no way to run Hypergiant under Guile. In Common Lisp, tons of packages for QuickLisp/UltraLisp will run on SBCL, CCL and ECL with ease.
In the end Scheme+Dependencies can be more convoluted than a subset of Common Lisp (you can avoid CLOS if you don't need it for instance).
Scheme SRFIs make Scheme a much bigger language while also making it painful to use because you have to research which SRFI are implemented in your scheme variant then map those SRFI numbers to what they actually do then you usually need read the raw SRFI because that's the only documentation around.
R7RS is going on 14 years old and there's still no R7RS-large either. They really need to just take the critical SFRIs, give them names and proper documentation, then call them R7RS-large and move the current work to a future R8RS.
I've never really heard of installing SRFIs (could be my ignorance); do you mean importing them? Or is installing SRFI implementations as their own packages really common? (Haven't really tried R7.)
The anti-R6/R7 folks (or what I've heard) won't see a problem so long as you can use CL to build fancy serious software, which lets Scheme stay small and simple for education. (Of course ideally you'd be able to do any SICP exercise on a Scheme implementation out of the box, though.)
For that I use Chicken 5 with trace, srfi-203 and srfi-216.
Disappointed to learn this is unrelated to the Chicken chicken chicken https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk
How can you tell?