[plt-scheme] running an MzScheme debugger in Emacs?

--- On Fri, 4/25/08, Prabhakar Ragde <plragde at uwaterloo.ca> wrote:

> From: Prabhakar Ragde <plragde at uwaterloo.ca>
> Subject: Re: [plt-scheme] running an MzScheme debugger in Emacs?
> To: plt-scheme at list.cs.brown.edu
> Date: Friday, April 25, 2008, 8:34 PM
> Benjamin Russell writes:
> 
> > This is no problem for most tasks, but SICP is a very
> challenging
> > book, and I would at least like to work in my favorite
> editing
> > environment while working on the exercises in that
> book in order to
> > focus more on the problems.
> 
> It's one thing to request more Emacs-like functionality
> in DrScheme, and 
> another to assert that you can't work through SICP
> without it. You can 
> work through SICP in Notepad -- arguably, working through
> any learning 
> sequence in a manner where hasty changes are discouraged is
> actually 
> better.

Page 4 of the Introductory Assignment (http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/psets/ps1/ps1_1.tex) of the Sample Programming Assignments for SICP states, "Learning to use the debugging features will save you much grief on later problem sets."

Sure, it is possible to work through SICP in Notepad.  It is also possible to write War and Peace by hand next to a construction site, too, and to go from New York to San Francisco by bicycle while carrying one's grandmother on one's back, as well.  But why!?  I never said that I "can't work through SICP without it"; I said, "I would at least like to work in my favorite editing environment ... in order to focus more on the problems."  The question is precisely one of "saving grief"; i.e., working efficiently in a pleasant environment.  Having more "Emacs-like functionality in DrScheme" can contribute, at least in my case, to "saving grief."

Benjamin L. Russell