Unix System Programming in Scheme
The Unix Way, if such a thing even exists anymore in modern systems, is to glue small applications together into a sort of dataflow graph. This glue is typically applied through use of a shell scripting language, like that built into the Bourne shell. Unfortunately, the Bourne shell syntax becomes awkward very quickly when programs written in it progress pass the trivial stage.
Olin Shivers came to the rescue with the Scheme shell. It's a full Scheme system with extensions to make Unix programming easier. It has new syntax for process creation, input/output redirection, and system call interfaces. It manages to (almost) seamlessly merge the utility of Unix with the elegance of Scheme.
Shivers wrote a paper on the Scheme shell that goes into much more detail about his motivations, his design philosophy, and what using the Scheme shell for Unix programming is like. It seems to me to be an ideal solution for programs too complex to write trivially in Bourne shell script, but still within the realm of Unix scripting. I'll report again if and when I get a chance to use it.