Neither. I've never done any large-scale coding in Scheme (I'm a Common Lisper) but it's more than just a hunch. The theory behind name capture is easy to understand. The only counter that I've heard is, "Well, it just doesn't seem to be a problem in practice." I believe that this is only because the Arc code and user base have not yet reached the scale where the problems manifest themselves.
But even if Paul is right and name capture is rarely if ever a problem in practice, punting on name capture seems to me fundamentally at odds with the stated goal of producing the 100-year language. At best it's an unnecessary burden on the programmer, and at worst it's a time bomb that could go off any time. Either way it doesn't make me optimistic that Arc is going to win in the long run.
I agree that the authors have failed to create a sense of community by mostly being absent. They do provide a bit of feedback, but it is minimal at best. It is clear that their interest in this project is not aligned with the current interests of the self appointed "user base".
However, in my opinion (and I'm a nobody so you may want to stop reading here), the arc core as well as some of the code that ships with it (news.arc, blog.arc, html.arc) rank amongst the best examples of working lisp code that highlight the power of lisp. news.arc is a great example of the use of macros and arc.arc is a great example of the power of embedded languages (feel free to point out better). To say nothing of the fact that this stuff is simply beautiful in a way I don't get from script-fu, elisp (slime being the one exception), edi weitz libraries, SICP etc. (it probl has something to do with how concise arc is).
So whatever. If more arc is thrown our way, I'll be happy to take it.
the key point in this is conceptual closedness,
designing things to fit into each other, leaving room for your solution to fill in the blanks.
arc/scheme (and, to a degree, common lisp) code shows this much clearer than other languages. abelson and sussman followed that route in SICP, too, but you need to read between the lines.
