On Tue, 20 Jun 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Derek pontificates:
> > If you think that's bad, try LISP or scheme... You'll never want to see
> > another set of parentheses again!
>
> White space as syntax is probably why I'll never learn Python unless
> there's a big price tag on it. It's bad enough in Makefiles.
>
> Now about those parentheses... those are languages in which you
> can go a long way without encountering any of these:
>
> '{[]}'+=- :: ~`|&*^%$
No but you have equally obscure and meaningless keywords like car, cdr,
and lambda etc. What's the difference? At least with punctuation I have
only one character to remember! And I don't have to count all those damn
parentheses!!
You've been listening to rms too much ccb! ;)
> Those are languages in which you can learn ALL of the core syntax in
> under 20 minutes and spend almost no time arguing with yourself about
> why every statement has a ; at the end except the ones that come before
> the END keyword.
I'll agree with this, and admit that I actually thought scheme was
interesting, and REALLY useful for getting the hang of recursion.
> I've seen 4-year grads who had never gotten beyond how pointers work
> in C simply for the lack of semester course in Scheme.
Well, I've used both and met more than a couple of grads who have "never
gotten beyond how pointers work in C" despite having a scheme class...
While I get your point, I'm not convinced that it would be all that
helpful for a lot of people.
--
Derek Martin
System Administrator
Mission Critical Linux
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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