[plt-scheme] Sweet-expressions on PLT

From: Eduardo Bellani (ebellani at gmail.com)
Date: Mon Nov 3 14:13:10 EST 2008

Hey there Matt,

Man, I do think the David has some valid points, but frankly my opinion is
that
of a foreigner to the lisp world, so even I don't trust my opinion too much
on this
subject.

The PLT translation effort is precisely aimed at building stuff with
leftparen, which was the
only framework that worked a hello world with the amount of effort that I
found acceptable.

Oh, and thanks for the HtDP, I'm currently looking SICP lectures to dive
into scheme itself
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/ so I
don't think I'll
have the time, but it went to the top of my reading list (pun intended :P).

I'm pretty comfortable with rails and merb for my production needs, but I'm
also looking
for the better ways to do things and to expand my knowledge base, plus I'm
also trying to
make a point for other people I know and some students at the college I
graduated in about (I
do some volunteer teaching there) about
lisp/scheme, and sweet-expressions sounded like the way to begin to approach
the subject
with people who are not familiar with s-expressions syntax (which I found
somewhat alien, and I do think others
would feel the same) so to get their feet wet.

Anyway, I'll get on with the porting thing, and try to post specific
questions when they arise.
Hugs everyone.

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 4:45 PM, Matt Jadud <jadudm at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>



-- 
Eduardo Bellani

www.cnxs.com.br

"What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow men. That is the entire Law;
all the rest is commentary." The Talmud
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