My DevX article "Using Gambit-C Scheme to Create Small, Efficient Native Applications" is now online
My article is a quick introduction to Scheme, and then some examples building small compiled applications in Scheme. Gambit-C Scheme compiles to C, and the generated C code is then compiled and linked. When I need to use Lisp, I tend to use Common Lisp for large applications and Gambit-C Scheme for small utilities. For me, being able to use a high level and expressive language like Scheme to build efficient and compact applications is a big win :-)
I find the development environment of Gambit-C Scheme with Gambit-C's Emacs support to be very productive. Marc Feeley, the developer of Gambit-C, mentioned to me that several companies are doing product develop in Gambit-C Scheme. I have a NLP toolkit that I have ported to Gambit-C and I hope to get the time to finish and "ship" it sometime this year.