[r6rs-discuss] academic leadership

[Chris Hanson]

One thing that concerns me about the discussion here is the
preponderance of opinion favoring academic leadership.  I have a
pretty good understanding of the academic world (even though I've left
MIT after working there for 26 years), and I think this is wrong.
Scheme will need a broader support base if it is to achieve widespread
usage: academics aren't representative of the broader programming
world.  The reason is that academics rarely build large applications
with long lifetimes, while non-academic programmers do this regularly.
I don't think academics have good insight into what non-academics do,
nor is the reverse true.  I do have significant experience in both
worlds, and I have seen standards decisions that make no sense from
the non-academic perspective, not only in R6RS but also earlier.
Without additional involvement from non-academic programmers, that's
likely to continue.