How to Debug Chez Scheme Programs (2002)

Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago

swatson741

50 points

5 comments

scheme.comTechstory

calmmixed

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40/100

LispDebuggingSchemeProgramming Languages

Key topics

Lisp

Debugging

Scheme

Programming Languages

The post discusses debugging techniques for Chez Scheme programs, sparking a discussion on the usability of Lisp tooling and the trade-offs between dynamic and statically compiled languages.

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01Story posted
Sep 15, 2025 at 5:22 PM EDT
4 months ago
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Sep 18, 2025 at 5:17 AM EDT
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4 months ago
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Discussion (5 comments)

Showing 5 comments

HexDecOctBin

4 months ago

2 replies

Lisp tooling is the weirdest of all. On one hand, it allows full introspection and reflection on all internal state. On the other hand, it is almost as clunky as GDB command line. Why is there no visual debugger?

Sometimes I think Emacs was the worst thing to happen to Lisp. It put the language in a "Worse-is-better" box and left it there.

pjmlp

4 months ago

On the contrary, the problem is that people are stuck in the UNIX open source survivors of the Lisp world.

What you want is Lisp Works, Allegro Common Lisp, or Clozure (on macOS).

Or Racket, when on Scheme.

CyberDildonics

4 months ago

It has only been 70 years, I'm sure it's on its way soon.

widdershins

4 months ago

> The inspector is menu driven, and you can always see the available options by typing "?." For the most part, the options are self-explanatory.

I've enjoyed using Chez Scheme a lot, but I never could get my head around its built-in debugger. I never remember where to go to just view a stack trace, and if I do find it, I end up confused when I try to navigate around it.

I suspect all the information I could possibly want is in there, but I don't find the interface at all intuitive.

dexterlagan

4 months ago

Racket has a very nice built-in debugger in its DrRacket editor, with thread visuals and all. Too bad nobody uses DrRacket, or Racket anymore. Admittedly, even with the best debugger, finding the cause of runtime errors has always been a pain. Hence everybody's moving towards statically compiled, strongly typed languages.

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ID: 45255088Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 5:11:42 PM

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