> particularly as Guile e.g. greatly lags Racket performance

Huh. This has not been my experience, rather the other way around.

I do see a whole heap of benchmarks that contradict it, so I probably should put in some effort to find out why, or if I'm just plain wrong... But at a guess? Guile doesn't have Racket's startup time penalty, and most of what I do is IO bound - and Guile's IO story is better than Racket's.

I'm happy for Guile to be getting more attention, but wouldn't write off Racket. A few quick thoughts...

* The recent Guile work on WASM is promising. (Note also Jens Axel Soegaard's recent work on WASM with a Racket-related compiler.)

* Racket's rehosting atop Chez seems like a good idea, and I'd guess that the Racket internals are now easier to work with than Guile's.

* Racket has done a lot of great work, and is a nice platform for people who can choose their tools without worrying about employability keywords for their resume. It made some missteps for broader adoption when it had a chance, and several of the most prominent industry practitioner contributors left.

* Racket still has the best metaprogramming facilities, AFAIK. But even more important than `syntax-parse` and `#lang`, one thing I'd really like from Guile and other Schemes is to support Racket's module system.

(I really like the ability to define Racket submodules inline, in fragments, for things like embedded unit tests <https://docs.racket-lang.org/overeasy/> and embedded API docs <https://docs.racket-lang.org/mcfly/>.)

(I also wanted to play with Racket's module system for PL research compilers: having early compiler implementation for a new language first expand into Scheme code, and then later (with submodules) also do native/VM code generation, while keeping the option to still expand to Scheme code (for better development tools, or for when changing the language). For example, imagine targeting a microcontroller or a GPU.)

* Right now, any Scheme is for people who don't have to do techbro/brogrammer interviews. The field has been in a bad place for awhile, professionalism-wise, and the troubled economy (and post-ZIRP disruption of the familiar VC growth investment scams) and the push to "AI" robo-plagiarism (albeit with attendant new investment scams) are suddenly making the field worse for ICs.