[plt-scheme] Re: Change the World

It helps to order FP books from such stores. A Houston B&B stocked 
TLL/TLS for a while because my wife ordered it in a fit of marketing 
"-) -- Matthias

P.S. She never picked it up either.

On Mar 22, 2005, at 7:04 PM, jekwtw wrote:

>   For list-related administrative tasks:
>   http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-scheme
>
> 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
>>
>