Wow, that's a crazy flame-y thread by LtU standards.
I find myself agreeing with Tom Lord. Which is perhaps a sign of how far arc has changed my views in the last 2 years.
The one place where he seems on shaky territory is in the discussion about what the 'true spirit of scheme' is. Perhaps scheme started out farther along the 'bondage and discipline' continuum than lisp to begin with. I don't know. This was, for me, the most telling quote:
compiler writers economically dominate Scheme standardization and don't want to admit that there's a useful language larger than what they can usefully compile
I want to look harder at SCM after reading this thread. Thanks for bringing it up.