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The defining features of Scheme, differentiating it from predecessors, were probably "proper tail recursion" and "first class continuations". Recursion was not only encouraged but also the principle method of looping.

Although Scheme has a handy "do" procedure for iteration (somewhat like "for" in C), it's quite possible it's not used as much as it could be.

Most Schemes also offer "unhygienic" or low-level macros, though there's a learning curve for it.

I agree Scheme IDE support is marginal, but editor support is fine. Haven't really missed SLIME or other IDE. Compiling Scheme to native code is for me a different workflow anyway.



What's so bad about hygienic macros?




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