Regarding how "the right thing" stacks up to the worse-is-better solution, the author writes:
> How does the right thing stack up? There are two basic scenarios: the ``big complex system scenario'' and the ``diamond-like jewel'' scenario.
> The ``diamond-like jewel'' scenario [Scheme] goes like this:
> The right thing takes forever to design, but it is quite small at every point along the way. To implement it to run fast is either impossible or beyond the capabilities of most implementors.
This doesn't sound like it's actually the case, is it? There are, of course, many different Scheme implementations; they seem to get implemented in reasonable amounts of time, and some execute code very quickly indeed.
> How does the right thing stack up? There are two basic scenarios: the ``big complex system scenario'' and the ``diamond-like jewel'' scenario.
> The ``diamond-like jewel'' scenario [Scheme] goes like this:
> The right thing takes forever to design, but it is quite small at every point along the way. To implement it to run fast is either impossible or beyond the capabilities of most implementors.
This doesn't sound like it's actually the case, is it? There are, of course, many different Scheme implementations; they seem to get implemented in reasonable amounts of time, and some execute code very quickly indeed.