Why does this matter? As Steve Yegge said, "If you don't know how compilers work, then you don't know how computers work." Yegge describes 8 problems that can be solved with compilers (or equally well with interpreters, or with Yegge's typical heavy dosage of cynicism). Scheme syntax is different from most other programming languages. Consider: Java has a wide variety of syntactic conventions (keywords, infix operators, three kinds of brackets, operator precedence, dot notation, quotes, commas,.