Are there people using the Scheme programming language out there? [closed]

Answer 1

"Is anybody really using this language?"

Paul Graham, famously.

Answer 2

Not a lot of people use it that I know, but it is definitely worth a peek (if even just to try programming in another paradigm, so that you learn to think differently). You're lucky to be able to take a class that uses Scheme, as most universities these days now teach Java. Here's a good link if you want to see some lectures from MIT or work on sample problems etc.

MIT Open Courseware - Structure and Interpretation Of Computer Programs

There's an accompanying book available on-line for free as well (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs).

UPDATE:

For those interested in a language that is similar to scheme that makes use of the JVM and can access Java libraries (since lots of universities use Java), check out Clojure. Maybe this will become the new language of choice for computer science introduction (we can all hope!).

Answer 3

Square USA used it to make the movie Final Fantasy.

Here's a paper they published on it: Gluing Things Together - Scheme in the Real-time CG Content Production.

From that paper:

At SIGGRAPH 2000 and 2001, we, Square USA R&D team showed real-time rendering of scenes from full computer-generated movie ``Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within''.

[...]

We found it tremendous help to have an embedded Scheme interpreter in real-time rendering engine.

Answer 4

Yes! Scheme is quite interesting. I learned it at my first year at the University of Waterloo. It is a little different at first, especially if you come from an OOP/imperative background.

It does a lot of nice things for you, and the functional paradigm is definitely one you should explore, if for nothing but gaining a different perspective.

It is also quite useful, for example, I just made a compiler for a super simplified version of C, and I couldn't imagine doing it without a functional language (:

Answer 5

I have learned Scheme for over 2 years now and it has significantly helped me as a programmer. It taught me how to think differently and understand deeper concepts and links between programming languages. It is in-fact true that you can write any program in Scheme as in Java and C, however it is rather difficult. There are series of program transformations that must take place before it can be interpreted as Java or C code. It's worth while learning the basics at least though.

Answer 6

Jazz Scheme is an open source scheme environment built on Gambit Scheme and it seems to aggressively promote industrial uses, check it out:

Jazz Scheme

They report new uses in their news:

Jazz Scheme News

According to this page, Scheme is (or was) in use at: DEC, TI, Tektronix, HP, and Sun.

This guy's LinkedIn CV reports using Chez Scheme at Disney.

Just googling around a little can reveal a lot. In this case, it bears out the observation that I once heard that Scheme use is pretty ubiquitous, just not very public.