On Aug 26, 2011, at 11:09 AM, Dan Grossman wrote: > 2. "Whatever you don't like you can fix by making your own language > for the course:" This is indeed a fantastic feature of Racket, but one > I plan not to use. .. showing them a modern, well-documented language, > without me tweaking it.
Nah, you should show **them** how easy it is to build a language. You are showing them simple macros. Now show them how to complete the macro into a language: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/Thoughts/Racket_is____.html (I should also point you to "Danny Yoo brainfuck" but I don't have the URI handy.) > 3. "You should really show them some typed racket." Shriram explained, but also look for Findle-Tobin-Hochstadt at STOP 2009. > 5. "Use boxes instead of mcons, they're more like SML references > anyway": Or I might use mutable structs instead of mcons. Please do. > 6. In reading the User's Guide, I was pretty surprised that first > (unlike car) raises an error on a non-list. I eventually looked over > at the Reference Guide where I learned that list? is O(1) and I was > able to connect the dots -- "aha, now /this/ is a pretty cool reason > to make cons cells immutable beyond the basic 'set-cdr! is nasty' ". > I recommend the User's Guide include a comment or footnote that first > is an O(1) operation -- you can just point to the Reference Guide for > any details. Where do you think it's best to say so? Lists are a bit scattered over the Guide, and I didn't find the place where (first '()) signals an error. [Not that this is necessarily the best place.] -- Matthias _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users
