#1 - srfi 9 solves this mostly, though I agree about the long names. If your implementation doesn't bundle that for you, you should probably use a different implementation.

#2 - preach it.

#3 - The "big" schemes provide hash tables for you.

#4 - Well... fexprs used to be standard in lisp, but implementers didn't enjoy figuring out what a symbol meant at compile time.

I dunno, I really enjoy coding in scheme. Especially syntax-rules. I know syntax-case is the bees knees, but syntax-rules is pretty easy for me to model quickly.