from hell to paradise ; ; ; was: [plt-scheme] Prereqs for robotic programming

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 3:46 PM, Prabhakar Ragde <plragde at uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>> But people are motivated toward pleasure and away from pain, so if
>>> learning FP is going to cause too much pain, it's going to be a non starter.
>>
>> Yes it is painful.
>
> Says who?

So say the masses. Books on OO and imperative (non-OO) are numerous;
and a lot of them are even good. Books on FP are few and far between.
You are also dealing with an expert community who sort of forgets how
hard it is. Now this group is very much the exception in that regard;
but you get the point.

> I wrote my first functional program in my fifth decade of life. And as my
> sixth approaches, I continue to learn about FP with an underlying fury --
> fury that from age 14 to 40+, my teachers, my peers, and my field conspired
> to hide this natural and elegant way of doing things from me. --PR

Yes I am a victim of the conspiracy you descibe; but no longer.