begin quoting Tracy R Reed as of Fri, Dec 28, 2007 at 04:16:36PM -0800: > SJS wrote: > >It'll be interesting to see how well it works. My disbelief is probably > >founded on encountering scheme as my ... ninth(?) programming language. > >I was pretty well schooled in the procedural languages by then. . . > > That seems to be the big problem with learning a functional language > after spending years with procedural. You have to be exceptionally > open-minded to make the switch. That doesn't mean it isn't worth making.
I disagree. You don't have to be exceptionally open-minded to make the switch; you perhaps have to be exceptionally open-minded and/or gullible to become an evangelist. To try out a new language, only only needs to be reasonably competent, willing, and able to spend the time. (It helps to have a problem to solve, too.) Learning "a different approach" should broaden one's horizons, not swap 'em out for a new set. > Reasonable people can disagree on what language is the best for doing > any particular task but I don't think reasonable people can disagree on > whether scheme/lisp are worth learning. They are. Yes. Learn it, so you can tell if you like it or not. :) > >I read the first few pages of the book, and found myself wondering if > >(define symbol value) modifies the global symbol table, and thinking > >that if it does, that's not really a good thing. I don't like globals > >anymore. > > I believe that does modify the global symbol table but that isn't the > only way to do it. Most schemers seem to use closures to eliminate the > use of globals. I dislike globals also and hope to learn more about this > technique for eliminating their use. It's been a long time since I've played with scheme. No doubt I've forgotton many of the tricks and techniques. Have the interpreters for *nix systems gotten usable yet? > > I like memory maps. > > Memory map? Is that a datastructure? Um, no. It's a map. Y'know. Of memory. -- Graph paper works well. Stewart Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
