On Jun 6, 2012, at 6:22 PM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote: > > On 05/06/12 08:53, David Kastrup wrote: >> I would doubt that this would have been the fault of Scheme. More >> likely a problem of the Scheme/LilyPond interface choices, but those >> choices don't go away when replacing Scheme. > > No, it was the fault of the unfamiliar Scheme syntax. A colleague used to > working with Scheme was able to solve the problems I encountered trivially > without reference to anything LilyPond-specific.
Hmm. The way you wrote that, it appears that the fault is not with Scheme but the with one's unfamiliarity with Scheme. This is certainly *my* problem with understanding the Scheme-based extensions in Lilypond. And yet when I look at them I can intuit some sense of the structure and processes of the extensions (I have a little experience with eLisp, which helps just slightly). Despite all the parentheses which do make one feel a bit cross-eyed, Scheme is designed to be a simple and quickly learned language which is firmly grounded in the principles of good computer programming- one of the reasons it is used in teaching beginning programmers at MIT. using "pretty-printing" makes the syntax a bit easier for humans to read. The first few chapters of SICP would probably be very helpful. http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-10.html There is also HTDP which is Scheme based (although they now call their specific version "Racket"). http://www.htdp.org/ In the early chapters, which is all the farther I have gotten, SICP is more about Scheme programming and HTDP is more about the general process of thinking about what computer programs accomplish and how to design the logic to achieve that goal. So far I am not managing to learn the syntax rules in an afternoon, though. :-( But then I am 52 and don't learn as quickly as I once did, and my only computer programming class was one semester of a general ed course which included only Fortran and punch cards ca. 1979. _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
