Scheme Programming/Why Learn Scheme?

Scheme is an excellent language in which to learn the principles of most programming languages. It has a small syntax, and abstracts the programmer far enough away from the machine to express algorithms and ideas simply and concisely.

It is used both as a standalone programming language and as an embedded scripting language (for example, in the Gimp image-editing program). Many universities, including the University of British Columbia and the University of Waterloo, use a variety of Scheme in their introductory computer science courses. The frequently-used textbook Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs makes heavy use of Scheme.

Scheme is frequently praised for its uniform syntax. It is an expressive syntax that can not only be used to write computer programs, but can also be easily read and interpreted by other programs. In fact, some Scheme implementations that are written in Scheme operate through metacircular evaluation.