[rescue] fans fans fans...

[Dave McGuire]

On June 21, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> >   ...and you may name a hundred systems.  Maybe even five hundred.
> > Compare that to the number of packages written in, say,
> > C...FORTRAN...C++...hmm? ;)  *poke*
> 
> Just because a language doesn't have popular support doesn't mean it
> is bad.  Just like having popular support doesn't mean it is good
> (ahem, VB).  In the case of Lisp, I feel that it's problem is people
> who don't use the proper editor (if you learn the commands, emacs
> makes dealing with the parens quite simple), and/or think of it as
> just an AI language, thanks to those stupid 70s and 80s wanks.

  HEY hey hey...I never said it was *bad*, man...

> OK.  First, I recommend Scheme over Lisp.  I think it gets the point
> across a lot faster than lisp does, and I think it is pretty easy to
> switch back and forth, and the best thing I've found for learning
> either is for scheme.

  What are the differences?  I know they're related in some way but
I'm not sure how.  Is it easy to summarize?

[book recommendations deleted]

  I will grab those books when finances permit.

> As to starting environment, guile seems pretty decent.  It isn't
> something you would want to use professionally much, but it has a lot
> of bindings available for it, which are pretty much needed if you want
> to do real world stuff.  Plus, it is available on just about every
> platform with a GNU toolkit, so you can use it on whatever you want.

  I already have guile (the EDA package that I use requires it) so
perhaps I'll start with that.

  Cool.  Thanks for the recommendations!  Of course you know, when I
actually get started, I'll probably flood your mailbox with dumb
questions. ;)

       -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire                  "Needing a calculator indicates that
St. Petersburg, FL              your .emacs file is incomplete." -Joshua Boyd