[PD] Re: [PD-announce] k_guile v0.0.1

Larry Troxler lt at westnet.com
Mon Jan 12 00:36:57 CET 2004


On Sunday 11 January 2004 17:29, Frank Barknecht wrote:
> Hallo,
>
> Dave Phillips hat gesagt: // Dave Phillips wrote:
> > And Frank: Lisp is 'way cool, very easy to learn, you'll get used to it
> > quickly. You don't need to learn everything about the language to use
> > the Common apps, and if you have any background in another language
> > you'll find Lisp very straightforward to acquire.
>
> Well, I do know Lisp a littly bit. Re: Micheal: The SCIP book, which I
> read (first half only yet) is a seminal book in computer science fully
> pronounced: "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs".  Full
> text is online here: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/ It uses Scheme as
> example language.
>

Ahh, so you know Scheme, not Common Lisp. Although based on the same syntax 
and principles, they are quite different languages, with almost opposite 
goals. Scheme is a small, elegant teaching language, whereas Common Lisp is a 
very high level, full-featured, get-the-job-done-fast practical language. 

So don't write off the Lisp family of  languages altogether until you've 
tried, say, Common Music running in Common Lisp.

In fact, at my day job, for the kind of jobs that most people would probably 
use either a spreadsheat app, or Mathcad for, I tend to use CLISP (well hey, 
it's a Windows machine)  

It's fast, it's powerfull, and it's interactive.

> But as with Go or Chess: knowing the rules, which are very simple in
> Lisp, is one thing, and in the case of Go, Chess and Lisp it seems to
> be the most tiny thing in mastering the game. As I never really *used*
> Lisp, be it in music or in Emacs, I termed myself a "Lisp idiot". ;)
>
> ciao

Don't worry about mastering it, and don't worry about comparing it to the 
programming languages that you already know. Just spend some time playing 
with Common Music (IMHO). Best to treat it as a game, play time, if you know 
what I mean. (Like what we do when we make music!). Try typing expressions 
into the interpreter, and see what comes out. Experiment. 

Or maybe you've already gone down this route and were dissapointed. If so, 
then hey, everone's different.

If you're coming from a C/C++/Pascal/Basic background, as was the case with 
me, then yes, this strange syntax seems very foreign at first. But once you 
spend a week or two of your free time with it, you may start to get the 
"a-ha" reaction.

Or maybe not ;-)


Larry









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