The Scheme Advantage

Scheme is easier, more powerful, and more practical.

• With Scheme, students as young as sixth grade are able to grasp such advanced concepts as recursion.
• Because Scheme is much easier, with less computerese, students can concentrate on the concepts rather than the syntax.
• Clear and elegant, Scheme makes programming fun to learn.
• Scheme forces students to think about computation and to develop good programming techniques.
• The novice can be writing powerful programs in Scheme much sooner than in BASIC, Pascal, or C, while gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the process.

Scheme is a dialect of LISP. In consequence,

• It is interactive.
• It has a simple, straightforward syntax.
• It encourages the use of simple functions to build more complex ones.
• It supports a variety of paradigms, including object-oriented programming.

Scheme is concise and accessible.

• Scheme is especially good at expressing complicated relationships in a few lines of code. What might take five pages of code in BASIC, Pascal, or C, can usually be done in one page of Scheme.
• Scheme programs are easier to write, easier to read, and easier to understand. As a result, Scheme is simple to learn, enabling amateurs and professionals alike to understand advanced techniques such as functional and object-oriented programming.

Scheme has many educationally desirable features.

• With Scheme, computer science educators can emphasize the formulation of good concepts and programming practices rather than the development of syntactic skills. Students can follow a straightforward path from ideas to programs without being sidetracked by issues that are of no consequence conceptually.
• Scheme students gain a deeper insight into the nature of computer programming and are able to progress much further into the algorithmic aspects of computer science. This is achieved with almost none of the syntactic distractions that take up so much time in most introductory courses. Using Scheme, students direct their creative energies toward devising elegant algorithms.
• With their more solid understanding of computer science, Scheme students find it easy to learn other more complex languages, such as C++. Many employers find this flexibility extremely desirable when recruiting students for short-term or permanent programming positions.

Sounds attractive? Perhaps it's time for you to make the move to Scheme.
For further information, read The Case For Change.

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Last modified: May 29, 1998 Copyright © 1998 Schemers Incorporated Please EMail comments to emartin@schemers.com