The Scheme Underground

"I am not a Church numeral; I am a free variable!"

The Scheme Underground is an effort to develop useful software packages in Scheme for use by research projects and for distribution on the net.

We want to take over the world. The internet badly needs a public domain software environment that allows the rapid construction of software tools using a modern programming language. Our goal is to build such a system using Scheme 48, an ultra-portable Scheme implementation which is easily interfaced to existing software written in other languages.

MIT undergrads: want to hack Scheme?

A major emphasis of this effort will to create a hacker culture that teaches and encourages elegant coding style. People working on this project will be expected to be mature enough to allow other people to constructively critique their code. They should also be mature enought to critique others' code in a constructive and professional manner. This project will give you the opportunity to learn good coding style from highly experienced Scheme programmers, many of whom helped define the language.

Projects

We are looking for motivated hackers, with good programming taste, who like Scheme, are looking for interesting and fun projects, and are willing to continue into the fall semester. If any of these projects appeal to you, and you think you fit the bill, get in touch with us.

Remember, it's an underground. We don't hire summer students, alas -- we have to use our grant money for the research we're paid to do. However, if you can find UROP funding at MIT, we are more than willing to supervise your work over the summer. See something in the project list you'd like to do for an advanced undergraduate project, a UROP-for-credit, or an M.Eng. thesis? Come talk to us. Just want to hack up one of the easier, fun ones for hack value? Welcome to the underground...

Not an MIT undergrad?

Related efforts

If you are a wizard Scheme hacker, and are looking for summer jobs at research labs such as NEC, get in touch with us.

Ian Horswill --- ian@ai.mit.edu