[plt-scheme] Re: Change the World

I can't speak for the book situation nation-wide, but it's been pretty
dismal around the Minneapolis-St. Paul in recent years.  I've watched
Borders and Barnes&Noble both succomb to the "foo for dumies" trend, and now
even Microcenter is beginning to show signs.  I've spoken to managers a
number of times over the years, but with no discernable effect.  I'm sure
that Amazon, etc. have applied pressure, and of course no one wants to keep
inventory.  Whatever the causes, the net effect has been contraction of
stock to the most popular -- 10^6 largely redundant texts on .net, C##,
Java, and no replenishment of stock dealing with the Lisp/Scheme, much less
ML or Haskell.

Thus, learning on one's own from books has gotten much harder since I
started.

*gloom*

 -- Bill Wood
    bill.wood at acm.org

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alex Peake" <alex.peake at comac.com>
To: <plt-scheme at list.cs.brown.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 4:37 PM
Subject: [plt-scheme] Re: Change the World


>   For list-related administrative tasks:
>   http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-scheme
>
> > Subject: Re: [plt-scheme] Re: Change the World
> > From: Guillaume Marceau <gmarceau at cs.brown.edu>
> > To: Geoffrey Knauth <geoff at knauth.org>
> > Cc: plt-scheme at list.cs.brown.edu
> > Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 13:51:43 -0500
> >
> > On Mon, 2005-03-21 at 10:14 -0500, Geoffrey Knauth wrote:
> >
> > > I'm trying to guess what makes it hard for Scheme to "catch
> > on" in the
> > > mainstream.
> >
> > My pet theory is that it's very difficult to learn functional
> > programming alone, on your own. You have to go to class and
> > get it taught to you. Or you have to have a friend teaching it to you.
>
> [snip]
>
> >
> > -- Guillaume (via proxy)
> >
>
> I must disagree. I use a method that is to use books, but several of them.
The several give you
> different viewpoints, approaches, examples and the like that together
paint a complete enough
> picture.
>
> That is not to say that all people learn from books, but a trip to Borders
(or similar) does
> demonstrate that LOTS of books on programming are purchased.
>
> Alex
>