languages I like to think of scheme/lisp and perl as languages opposite to each other. they embody different philosophies of language design much more than any other pairs of languages.

Scheme [and lisps] stands for the abstraction as its foremost goal It lets users make abstractions to the maximum level possible. It has avoided a syntax so that abstraction is possible to the ultimate level. Schemes structure allows the meta-programs to make assumptions about the code being executed so that it is easy to bolt into it any type of paradigm - be it functional, procedural, object oriented, meta programming, continuation passing style or such. It makes no assumptions about the design and molds itself into the thought process making it a really good language to think in.

Perl on the other hand provides a lot -- quite a lot of simple language constructs that makes the often done tasks very easy to write and use. It saves a lot of info in pigeonholes while it processes data and makes it available to the subroutines and constructs which needs it. This makes the programs written in perl exponentially shorter than programs written in languages like c or java. It specifies the syntax to such an extent that it is comparable to real world languages
some times [lookup perl poetry] and is able to make these exceptional syntaxes look natural.

Scheme has a community that is well-knit - though small and has two different processes of updating the language. The SRFIs and the RnRS . The RnRS increments the scheme versions while SRFIs serves as a kind of expanding standard library which is not very tightly controlled. This process is necessary due to the multitude of scheme implementations that are available in the net.

Perl on the other hand has larry and damian controlling the evolution of the language. with a single distribution. They have a large community supporting the CPAN [another kind of standard library].

These qualities makes the ongoing projects by these languages to bring out the next version really interesting.

Looking at the Scheme, they are in the process of creating r6rs which is their next version, but i think that from a design stand point I am awaiting Arc promised by paul graham which promises to be a something that learns from what has gone before in the lisp world and is ready to break quite a few conventions if necessary. While there has been not much information from Paul Graham on the progress of Arc, He has been writing interesting essays on his way of looking at things.

On perl, they too are in the process of designing perl6 the next version of perl, and typical of them, they have gone about it in the typical perli way. With RFCs from perl hackers, being analyzed by apocalypses from larry and finally Exegesis from damian to demonstrate them. they seem to have quite a lot to show, with new syntaxes for objects, mutli-methods, regexes, etc and some new ways of doing things.

either way the future seems interesting for us.  ¶ 1:55 AM