Introduction

Welcome to "The Steel Book" — a guide for a dynamic and versatile programming language designed to harmonize with Rust, known as Steel. Born from the Lisp family and descended from Scheme, Steel offers a blend of dynamic expressiveness within Rust's strict environment, creating a powerful synergy.

But why choose a Lisp dialect as an extension language?

Rust provides robustness and safety, ensuring reliable and efficient software development. However, its rigidity can sometimes feel limiting when facing dynamic and evolving requirements, such as those encountered in a text editor, a crucial tool that developers tailor to their needs. Enter Lisp — a language family renowned for its extensibility and dynamic nature. It serves as the ultimate extension language, designed to be extendable itself by allowing developers to create DSLs and tweak the evaluation process to fit any domain or task, even those unforeseen or irrelevant to the original application.

In "The Steel Book," our aim is twofold: to demystify language basics for developers unfamiliar with Scheme intricacies and to teach about Steel in particular. That said, no prior Scheme experience is needed; we've got you covered.