Lisp links thread

nebogeo · Post by **nebogeo** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 1:22 pm 0

It is controversial isn't it - it only narrowly passed the vote.

I agree with the sentiment that scheme should be a more experimental minimalistic language primarily, and not get into the same space as more mainstream scripting languages. I do like the standardised modules though - and unicode, and from briefly looking through the spec I think it's better explained and a bit more rigorous.

nebogeo · Post by **nebogeo** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 1:26 pm 0

Oh, btw - I'm working on some fluxus scheme livecoding tutorials:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O5DJTOy6EA
Might be of interest here...

adam · Post by **adam** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 4:46 pm 0

thanks for that Dave, I'll have a look when i'm on a machine with zee capability...

another one i came across, eulisp, new lisp dialect being worked on at the moment...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuLisp

failrate · Post by **failrate** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 7:12 am 0

@nebogeo: That is ace! A little hard to read the text when the blur effect is applied, but I got the impression that one could easily teach programming techniques to a nontechnical audience with that technique.

koogy · Post by **koogy** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 9:51 am 0

ha, i like the way it gets to 6:40 or so and then suddenly goes mental

nebogeo · Post by **nebogeo** » Thu Sep 06, 2007 8:00 am 0

failrate wrote:@nebogeo: That is ace! A little hard to read the text when the blur effect is applied, but I got the impression that one could easily teach programming techniques to a nontechnical audience with that technique.

I have done a few workshops which try to do exactly that. You can generally get someone with no programming experience up to the stage of making cubes dance around like that in an hour or so.

Scheme is good for this sort of thing - I think its a good sign for a language when non programmers can pick it up so fast, I don't think the same would be true for C/C++ etc.

adam · Post by **adam** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 3:03 pm 0

http://cdiggins.com/2007/09/17/combinat ... in-scheme/

adam · Post by **adam** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 8:24 pm 0

Page 13 of the Lisp 1.5 Programmer's Manual, showing the 'evalquote' function written as an m-expr. Basically, you're looking at all of Lisp defined in terms of itself.

teamonkey · Post by **teamonkey** » Fri Sep 21, 2007 2:30 pm 0

The first two Amazon reviews for SICP.

Firefox · Post by **Firefox** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:47 am 0

teamonkey wrote:The first two Amazon reviews for SICP.

I've had several goes at reading SICP, but I get very bored and give up. Perhaps I should dip into it at random rather than trying to wade through from the front?

GoatFoam · Post by **GoatFoam** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 12:17 pm 0

Firefox wrote:
teamonkey wrote:The first two Amazon reviews for SICP.
I've had several goes at reading SICP, but I get very bored and give up. Perhaps I should dip into it at random rather than trying to wade through from the front? :?

Perhaps.

My problem with it is that I can tell that it is a great book, and the non code bits are fine, but I just don't like lisp syntax. I understand why the syntax is the way it is, and even why it is elegant and good, but I just find it ugly and unpleasant to read.

Maybe forcing myself to do more stuff in scheme would help to fix it, but I shouldn't have to force myself should I?

Stick to Knuth :)

teamonkey · Post by **teamonkey** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 12:28 pm 0

I'm reading it front-to-back on a part-time basis and I'm not finding it too bad. Not nearly as bad as some of the other books I've got. A little bit at a time though.

nebogeo · Post by **nebogeo** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 2:38 pm 0

GoatFoam wrote:Maybe forcing myself to do more stuff in scheme would help to fix it, but I shouldn't have to force myself should I?

I had to force myself to do that when my mindset was all C/C++, which took a year or so. Now C/C++ just feels a bit yucky (I still do an awful lot of it though).

I do program Scheme in an object orientated manner though - which probably marks me as a heretic from all sorts of viewpoints

failrate · Post by **failrate** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 6:45 am 0

Not really blasphemy to write OO Scheme. MrEd has loads of objects, and even writing macros around structs can give the feel of proper OO.

@GoatFoam: As part of the Shmup-Dev contest going on right now, I'm making basic shmup in DrScheme. I'm going to be open-sourcing the code on submission, and the deadline is only 7 days away. It's basically all the code required for a 2D shooter in less than a thousand lines of code at last count.

GoatFoam · Post by **GoatFoam** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 8:13 am 0

failrate wrote: @GoatFoam: As part of the Shmup-Dev contest going on right now, I'm making basic shmup in DrScheme. I'm going to be open-sourcing the code on submission, and the deadline is only 7 days away. It's basically all the code required for a 2D shooter in less than a thousand lines of code at last count.

Take out all the line breaks and you can do it in one line '-)

I don't dispute the power of the language - that is obvious. I just don't get on with the notation. (f x) just seems less natural than f(x).

That is just me being old and inflexible though, so I think I will pick scheme up and have another go after my next project.