[plt-scheme] Are new Schemers supposed to be reading SRFIs?

On May 14, 2007, at 7:02 AM, Geoffrey S. Knauth wrote:

> On May 10, 2007, at 15:27, John Clements wrote:
>> In some ways, this resembles the problems that doctors have; in  
>> order to give the best possible advice, they need to keep up with  
>> all of the most recent findings, while at the same time  
>> discounting somewhat the more recent & unverified one.
>>
>> I don't think that CS has yet evolved (or, hitherto, needed to  
>> evolve) a good channel for this kind of dissemination.
>
> If there were contracts or machine readable documentation  
> everywhere, we could ask the computer, "Has anyone written code  
> that takes types X Y and produces Z?"  A smart network would find  
> implementations in different languages, rate them, and offer to  
> help convert them into our favorite language.

It turns out that this was my Diploma thesis in 1983. I applied it to  
ADTs, which were popular at the time.

OCAML had something like this in 1996/97. It was based at ENS and  
served via the Web. I don't know whether they still do. You may want  
to ask, though I don't think it took off.

-- Matthias







>
> For DrScheme there's Help Desk and browsing the collects  
> directories.  Maybe Help Desk could add type matching to its  
> skills.  The Computer Language Benchmarks Game (language shootout)  
> is fun to read, and Google Code will some day give better answers.
>
> On May 11, 2007, at 07:09, Jens Axel Søgaard compiled a cheat-list:
>>   SRFI 1   (lists)
>>   SRFI 13  (strings)
>>   SRFI 19  (time and date)
>> Also in use:
>>   SRFI 14  (characters)
>>   SRFI 27  (random numbers)
>>   SRFI 42  (eager comprehensions)
>>   SRFI 43  (vectors)
>> Seen, but not often:
>>   SRFI 26  (cut - specialiazing)
>>   SRFI 67  (compare procedures)
>
> I thought, "Good advice from a knowledgeable person!"  I wondered  
> how long Jens Axel took to assemble that list, and whether an  
> automated mechanism in DrScheme should report what and how often  
> things get used.  PLaneT could report how popular packages are.  I  
> wonder what library science thinks of computer science.
>
> Geoffrey
>
> _________________________________________________
>  For list-related administrative tasks:
>  http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-scheme