I have gone through the R6RS electorate and tried to guess each elector’s vote based on their statement of interest. It’s been a fun exercise. Most of the statements give clear hints (such as sentences like “R6RS will” + positive action, or Felix’s all-caps screaming battle cry). Other statements offer partial clues (such as insisting on minimalism, or deploring the lack of a standard library). Yet others are completely opaque (some of them reading like CVs packed with the author’s numerous accomplishments), in which case I ignored them.

OK, the results: R6RS will probably pass with a 70% approval rate.

I’d be interested in seeing any other predictions, especially if anybody has closely followed the r6rs-discuss list and has some time to burn. The official results are still more than a month off.

As most of you know, I strongly oppose R6RS. I will limit myself to asking those electors who complained about Scheme’s lack of structs and hash tables to go read the SRFI list and pay attention to SRFI-9 and SRFI-69. If your Scheme does not support one of the widespread SRFIs, you should ask your friendly implementor to reconsider. Also, the fact that R6RS brings some good things does not mean we need to compromise on the bad things; it’s always possible to restart the standardization effort and pick the gems out of the brown stuff.