[Chicken-users] Industrial use of Chicken?

[Dominique Boucher]

Hi all,

I used Chicken for the first time today. Let me say that I have been greatly
impressed by how easy it has been to port my code to it. My application,
which was originally targetting Kawa, was desesperately slow. My algorithm
is expressed in continuation passing style (CPS) and Kawa does not handle
general tail-calls efficiently. With Chicken, on the same machine, I got a
speedup of about 75. Instead of taking 110 minutes, my application now takes
90 seconds. 

Nice job, Felix! [BTW, I may turn lalr-scm into an egg in the near future.] 

So I am investigating the possibility of using Chicken to replace Kawa for
some of my current projects at work. Of course, with each new
technology/tool, comes a risk. So, before developing commercial-grade
applications using Chicken, I would like to know a few things:

- Are there other commercial applications using Chicken, or other commercial
uses of Chicken. When I began working with Kawa, I knew that some companies
were basing their work on it. Is it the same with Chicken? A proven track
record would really help me. (If you don't want to answer to this question
publicly on the mailing-list, feel free to contact me personnally and your
identity will be preserved as well as the nature of your project).

- How stable is it? Suppose I would like to develop an application server
(be it HTTP or not) featuring very high availability (in the telecom
industry), would you recommend (or not) using Chicken for implementing it?

Thank you very much for you help!

Dominique Boucher, Ph.D.
Lead Developer, R&D
Nü Écho Inc
www.nuecho.com