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Scheme, on the other hand, is very loosely specified. This is a good thing: the core language is so small that the entire standard fits on about 50 pages...It’s not nebulous, it’s simply minimalist. This is why Scheme is more of an idea than a language.

Smalltalk wound up being quite loosely specified. This, combined with the small "core," enabling single developers rolling their own, resulted in a high degree of fragmentation of the overall language community.




I noticed that quote as well.

Odd thing to call RnRS Scheme loosely specified. The RnRS spec is extremely well-written - and it even includes a semantics.

Now "Scheme" used to mean "a Scheme like language" is of course loosely specified - but that's another story.




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