People say this and it&#x27;s not really true.<p>Scheme has mutable state. Scheme has unmarked side-effects. Scheme has variables, as opposed to tags applied to constant values.<p>Scheme was an entirely new kind of language back when lambda expressions were Heavy Deep Magic and dynamic typing was something you did when your Flexowriter was well-oiled (hyperbole intentional). These days, it&#x27;s no weirder than Javascript or the more modern dialects of Java or Visual C#.Net. Hell, even C++ is getting lambdas and closures, and that&#x27;s a Serious Business COBOL-Replacement Language.<p>Modern Algol dialects <i>are</i> Scheme in everything except syntax, and now that metaprogramming (Ruby, to begin with) is beginning to catch on, I fully expect language designers to re-invent some shambolic version of s-expressions when they realize that metaprogramming in Algol syntax is <i>hard</i>.<p>Scheme <i>won</i>. It&#x27;s just that its victory was suppressed for political reasons.