Gerbil – An opinionated dialect of Scheme designed for systems programming

Here is some context on Racket vs Gerbil by a well-known Common-lisp Programmer, François-René Rideau : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fare.livejournal.com&#x2F;188429.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fare.livejournal.com&#x2F;188429.html</a>

Can anyone explain why there are so many implementations of Scheme written in Scheme? What is the point of doing that (apart from learning purposes)?<p>I know, for example that people want Racket VM to be implemented in Chez Scheme because Chez is super fast. But what about all other implementations?<p>Also, as I&#x27;m currently writing R5RS&#x2F;Clojure hybrid in Kotlin, can anyone please share any _simple_ standard algorithm of implementing r5rs macro system and macro expander?<p>The only thing I could find is <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.indiana.edu&#x2F;chezscheme&#x2F;syntax-case&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.indiana.edu&#x2F;chezscheme&#x2F;syntax-case&#x2F;</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ecraven.github.io&#x2F;r7rs-benchmarks&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ecraven.github.io&#x2F;r7rs-benchmarks&#x2F;</a> recent addition to the charts, and is doing quite well.

(Mostly just hoisting Noel Welsh&#x27;s comment to the top level) How will the expected upcoming move of Racket to the use of Chez affect the comparison between Gerbil and Racket? I&#x27;m trying not to set my expectations too high. BTW: RacketCon! This weekend!

Already a handful of &quot;how does this compare...?&quot; postings but the standard for a systems-programming scheme is scsh, a find abstraction layer over POSIX dating from the nineties.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scsh.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scsh.net&#x2F;</a>

How does this compare to prescheme from scheme48?<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.s48.org" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.s48.org</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;PreScheme" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;PreScheme</a>

The link should have been to <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cons.io" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cons.io</a> See Freenode #gerbil-scheme for active development and help. So far it is very nice and about twice as fast as sbcl.

For the uninitiated, how does this compare to guile?

Why do people keep thinking they can use a garbage-collected language for “systems programming”?

Can anyone briefly summarize the points of debate and optimization? I&#x27;m not familiar with the competing kit, and the primary goals.