[plt-scheme] Re: A Couple of Questions on DrScheme/Mzscheme

From: "Shriram Krishnamurthi" <sk at cs.brown.edu>

> Jens Axel Søgaard wrote:
>
> > Strange. I am a math major and have CS as a minor. [...]
> > In conclusion: I would put more more money on Felleisen's theory :-)
>
> Have you considered that, just by virtue of being on this list, you
> are not a good example to extrapolate from? (-:

Yes - but not for long  :-)

The naive part of me thinks:
    A "real" mathmatician /must/ like functional programming better
    than "normal" languages.

It suddenly reminds me of the time I took a couse on Groebner bases
(generalization of the algorithms Gauss elimination and polynomial
division),
which is used to solve sets polynomial equations in several variables.

We got an exercise, where we were suppossed to calculate these Groebner
basis on a specifik example - and although it was "mere calculation" it
was tedious. I instead turned in a Scheme program, that printed all the
steps in the
calculation (it took only sligthly longer to write, but was way more fun).
My teacher liked this
very much, and went so far to install Scheme himself. He told me, he had
tried to make
a similar C program, but had given up.


/Jens Axel