Limitations

There are a few problems with implementing Scheme on an object-oriented VM. First and foremost, it is difficult to implement first-class continuations. The Hotdog Scheme compiler does not implement call/cc, because it tries to generate code that the VMs will recognize. One could generate Scheme code that maintained a separate stack in the heap, using the runtime stack for computation only. A Scheme program would simply tail-call from one continuation to the next. This is how many languages implement continuations, with specialized runtime systems to support a program stack in the heap. This would be impractical for Scheme on an object-oriented VM.

Scheme runtime systems, like those in many other languages, often have an interactive ...

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