Which environment, IDE or interpreter to put in practice Scheme?

Question

I've been making my way through The Little Schemer and I was wondering what environment, IDE or interpreter would be best to use in order to test any of the Scheme code I jot down for myself.

Answer 1

Racket (formerly Dr Scheme) has a nice editor, several different Scheme dialects, an attempt at visual debugging, lots of libraries, and can run on most platforms. It even has some modes specifically geared around learning the language.

Answer 2

I would highly recommend both Chicken and Gauche for scheme.

Answer 3

PLT Scheme (DrScheme) is one of the best IDEs out there, especially for Scheme. The package you get when downloading it contains all you need for developing Scheme code - libraries, documentation, examples, and so on. Highly recommended.

Answer 4

If you just want to test your scheme code, I would recommend PLT Scheme. It offers a very complete environment, with debugger, help, etc., and works on most platforms.

But if you also want to get an idea of how the interpreter behind the scenes works, and have Visual Studio, I would recommend Tachy. It is a very lightweight scheme interpreter written in c#. It allows you to debug just your scheme code, or also step through the c# interpreter behind the scenes to see what is going on.

Answer 5

Just for the record I have to mention IronScheme.

IronScheme will aim to be a R6RS conforming Scheme implementation based on the Microsoft DLR.

Version 1.0 Beta 1 was just released. I think this should be good implementation for someone that is already using .NET framework.

EDIT
Current version is 1.0 RC 1 from Oct 23 2009

Answer 6

Google for the book's authors (Daniel Friedman and Matthias Felleisen). See whether either of them is involved with a popular, free, existing Scheme implementation.

Answer 7

It doesn't matter, as long as you subscribe to the mailing list(wiki/irc/online-community-site) for the associated community. It's probably worth taking a look at the list description and archives to be sure you are in the right one.

Most of these are friendly and welcoming to newcomers, so don't be afraid to ask.

It's also worth searching the archives of their mailing list(or FAQ or whatever they use) when you have a question - just in case it is a frequent question.

Good Luck!

Answer 8

Guile running under Geiser within Emacs provides a nice, lightweight implementation for doing the exercises. Racket will also run under Geiser and Emacs, though I personally prefer Guile and Chez Scheme a bit more.

Obviously installation of each will depend on your OS. I would recommend using Emacs version 24 and later since this allows you to use Melpa or Marmalade to install Geiser and other Emacs extensions.

The current version of Geiser also works quite nicely with Chicken Scheme, Chez Scheme, MIT Scheme and Chibi Scheme.

Answer 9

LispMe works on a Palm Pilot, take it anywhere, and scheme on the go. GREAT way to learn scheme.

Answer 10

I've used PLT as mentioned in some of the other posts and it works quite nicely. One that I have read about but have not used is Allegro Common LISP Express. I read a stellar review about their database app called Allegro Cache and found that they are heavy into LISP. Like I said, I don't know if it's any good, but it might be worth a try.

Answer 11

I am currently working through the Little Schemer as well and use Emacs as my environment, along Quack, which adds additional support and utilities for scheme-mode within Emacs.

If you are planning on experimenting with other Lisps (e.g. Common Lisp), Emacs has excellent support for those dialects as well (Emacs itself can be customized with its own dialect of Lisp, appropriately named Emacs Lisp).

As far as Scheme implementations go, I am currently using Petit Chez Scheme, which is an interpreted, freely distributable version of Chez Scheme (which uses a compiler and costs money to obtain a license).