[plt-scheme] Sweet-expressions on PLT

Hi Eduardo,

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 12:50 PM, Eduardo Bellani <ebellani at gmail.com> wrote:
> provide a why do it here
> http://www.dwheeler.com/readable/retort-lisp-can-be-readable.html .

This is largely a rehashing of all kinds of garbage. I especially like this:

"Guy Steele? The guy who developed both Common Lisp and Scheme, but
has now moved on from Lisp to lead the development of Java? Java, a
decidedly non s-expression-based language? Oh, yeah, that guy."

As if Steele's work at Sun on Java (in an infix syntax) was simply
because S-expressions are intractable. Next, they'll be saying that
Matthias Felleisen works with Scheme because he could never master the
state monad in Haskell!

I would honestly encourage you to simply attempt to use the language
as-is. Perhaps dive into HtDP (http://www.htdp.org), or (if you're
keen) take a look at projects like LeftParen:

http://blog.leftparen.com/

which will drop you into developing web applications in a rather
Rails-like environment. Either way, I wouldn't let yourself get caught
up in syntax malarky. C is different than Java is different than Ruby
is different than Scheme is different than Erlang is different than
Damian Conway's Latin syntax for Perl is different...

My point is, instead of learning enough Scheme to end up programming
in a syntax that is decidedly not that of Scheme, why not just learn
the language and get rolling?

But, up to you. If you have questions about your porting effort (that
is, if you don't get explicit offers for help), by all means do ask
questions. It isn't my intent to discourage you... but instead to
encourage you to embrace the language as-is.

Cheers,
Matt