51–60 of 114 posts
For Scheme this might hold true. But most Common Lisp programs I've seen are beyond hairy.
Plus, the (classic intro-to-LISP) notion that "it has a simple syntax with few constructs so it must be easy to program in" has to die.
Assembly has very simple syntax too. I wouldn't write a large program in it.
I wonder if any teacher already tried to teach LISP as a first language instead of java or C, and what there was to learn about it.
MIT is where the legendary "Wizard Book" (SICP)[0] was developed, for teaching their introductory class using Scheme. A few years ago, MIT restructured their entire CS curriculum (not just the intro class) in a way that required redesigning the individual curricula of each of the classes, including the intro class. As a result, they couldn't use SICP, since it didn't cover the same topics. At this time, they ended up…
I really do recommend it for anyone trying to get into functional programming or to understand the nirvana of Lisp / Scheme.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm afraid you're browser doesn't support XScript, please download Chrome Explorer 310. On a serious note, JavaScript and the lack of fragmentation is one of the best features of Web. You don't have to download appropriate browsers (in theory and mostly in practice) to run your website.
> I'm afraid you're browser doesn't support XScript, please download Chrome Explorer 310. But this sort of thing already happens all the time. You don't have the right flash player, or the right silverlight player, or the right version of Java. There would be very little difference in the UX between different scripting languages and the current UX w.r.t. media codexes, and the end result would be the same in both cas…
For one, if you find it bad, then why would you want to add to this badness with extra web languages? If anything, what you say is a counter-example.
Second, what you describe has stopped happening to 90% of web users for like 5 years or so. Nobody caresa bout Java or Silverlight, and Flash is getting all the more obscure. Heck, major browsers like Safari don't ship it algother, and even YouTube plays without it. At worse, you lose some shitty casual games.
>The alternative is to forever have to deal with a language that by design cannot even handle integer math or unicode strings properly.
Well, we seem to be doing ok even with such a language. Besides, most languages cannot handle unicode strings properly anyway (including Java, Go, PHP, Python, Ruby and several others). There are just too many subtleties.
Browser makers like Mozilla have had the option, at any time, to enable the use of Lisp (or any other language) in the place of Javascript. Nothing uniquely qualifies Javascript.
I wonder if any teacher already tried to teach LISP as a first language instead of java or C, and what there was to learn about it.
Full lecture series based on the first edition of SICP. I viewed and read after nearly 10 years programming in more mainstream languages (self-taught), and honestly think that 10 years was partly wasted because I didn't learn Scheme earlier.
As I was reading, I couldn't help but thinking about why the world didn't turn out this way, and I came to the conclusion that in 1998 the only two companies who realized that the future of the web was the browser were Microsoft and AOL. [1] The rough isomorphism between HTML and Lisp S-expressions [2] was an obvious technical advantage over JavaScript and among the Lisps, though tellingly not the case with Scheme, t…
An association list is just a list which elements are conses. I'm fairly certain that cons, car and cdr were part of Scheme since the beginning and they are all you need to build assoc and friends. Scheme lacked a proper hashtable datatype though, which was present in some other Lisps.
As I was reading, I couldn't help but thinking about why the world didn't turn out this way, and I came to the conclusion that in 1998 the only two companies who realized that the future of the web was the browser were Microsoft and AOL. [1] The rough isomorphism between HTML and Lisp S-expressions [2] was an obvious technical advantage over JavaScript and among the Lisps, though tellingly not the case with Scheme, t…
As I was reading, I couldn't help but thinking about why the world didn't turn out this way, and I came to the conclusion that in 1998 the only two companies who realized that the future of the web was the browser were Microsoft and AOL. [1] The rough isomorphism between HTML and Lisp S-expressions [2] was an obvious technical advantage over JavaScript and among the Lisps, though tellingly not the case with Scheme, t…
> among the Lisps, though tellingly not the case with Scheme, the association list was already in place An association list is just a list which elements are conses. I'm fairly certain that cons, car and cdr were part of Scheme since the beginning and they are all you need to build assoc and friends. Scheme lacked a proper hashtable datatype though, which was present in some other Lisps.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
MIT's introductory engineering course used to teach Scheme to the students using the excellent SICP text. I believe they now teach their beginning students Java or Python. I am not sure if there are blog posts or papers detailing the benefits of using Scheme in the class room.
Several other colleges have a similar course. Where I went (U of M - Twin Cities), they still use Scheme. I also would be interested in any papers about it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm afraid you're browser doesn't support XScript, please download Chrome Explorer 310. But this sort of thing already happens all the time. You don't have the right flash player, or the right silverlight player, or the right version of Java. There would be very little difference in the UX between different scripting languages and the current UX w.r.t. media codexes, and the end result would be the same in both cas…
> But this sort of thing already happens all the time. You don't have the right flash player, or the right silverlight player, or the right version of Java. For one, if you find it bad, then why would you want to add to this badness with extra web languages? If anything, what you say is a counter-example. Second, what you describe has stopped happening to 90% of web users for like 5 years or so. Nobody caresa bout Ja…
I don't. (Presuming that by "it" you mean "having a lot of plugins floating around".)
> Nobody caresa bout Java or Silverlight
Netflix uses Silverlight. There are an awful lot of nobodies using Netflix.
> we seem to be doing ok even with such a language
That depends on what you consider "OK". Blub users always think that things are OK.
> most languages cannot handle unicode strings properly
The problem with JS is that the standard requires strings to be represented internally as UTF-16, which cannot cover the entire unicode code point space. So JS's brokenness is worse than other languages because it is actually enshrined in its standard.