SICP: JavaScript Edition available for pre-order • Hacker News Board

Re: SICP: JavaScript Edition available for pre-order

#121

Post by ravi-delia » Sat, Jan 22, 2022, 6:34 PM UTC

hajile wrote: post #102

ravi-delia wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SCIP uses an amount of high-level functions that are frankly ridiculous outside of a very functional language. Hell, maybe even outside of a Lisp-1. That's not to say that Scheme is the best language (probably not in my top 5), but there are better languages than javascript for SCIP, and better programming methods than SCIP for javascript.

Which remotely popular language would be a better choice? The only ones that leap to mind are the ML languages.

I guess that's the rub, I'm not sure any of them are. Certainly Javascript has stronger support for functional programming than Python. Maybe Ruby? Even Haskell would get pretty much unreadable extremely quickly, though pattern matching would make some parts way easier.

I'm not coming at this from a lisp fanboy perspective (though I am one), it's just kinda the reality of SICP's style of programming. Even PAIP translates extremely well to Python, but SICP encourages a layering of abstractions that I can't picture reading without parenthesis keeping order of operations strict.

The best solution I can think of is having a pre-packaged setup for getting started with Scheme, a la Dr. Racket.

Re: SICP: JavaScript Edition available for pre-order

#122

Post by eggy » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 2:49 AM UTC

thot_experiment wrote: post #37

eggy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree in contrast to the previous reply I made. I still play with Shen, and I would love to see SICP in Shen, since Shen has ben implemented for many languages including JavaScript, but it's still a Lisp. I should try my hand at it if I really want to learn Shen. I am also an APL/J fan and this footnote in SICP rings true: [15] Richard Waters (1979) developed a program that automatically analyzes traditional Fortra…

I wanted to say Shen will never be relevant or useful without a change to it's licensing model, but looking at the website it seems like that exact thing has actually happened? It's hard to find concrete info so I'd love for someone to confirm, but IIRC Shen was encumbered by some sort of distasteful closed source model previously but it looks like that's no longer the case? Very excited to dive in if that's the case…

I actually subscribed for a while to SP, but I didn't like having to be connected to the internet to run it. I own two TBOS editions, and it scratches my Haskell, Lisp, Forth (because Klambda), and Prolog itch. I've toyed with the WaspLisp version, and I really want to dive into it. Deech's YT video years ago showing how you could program the front and back end in Shen, because there was a Ruby and JavaScript port really sold me. To me it is relevant, because I can use one language deployed on so many ports. Plus, I just really got into combinators after reading the beginning chapters of Stephen Wolfram's book on them. I don't live and die for open source-only projects. I think only the SP kernel, not all the libraries (grahics, etc.) were. I believe they are still in SP, but I may be wrong.

Re: SICP: JavaScript Edition available for pre-order

#123

Post by tartoran » Sun, Jan 23, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

jpgvm wrote: post #48

tartoran wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think hell is coded in Java

Hell, Heaven and Earth are written in Java. That is why most people are slow after waking up and why you need to sleep for garbage collection to run.

Spot on, we wake up groggy because the VM is kicking in