[rescue] back to needing an U1 cpu fan :-( need source

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Mon, Jun 24, 2002 at 04:05:08PM -0500, Bill Bradford wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 24, 2002 at 05:02:05PM -0400, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> > And a drain on their supply of U1 boards which they will need in years
> > to come to keep the people paying for support running.  That is why
> > Symbolics won't sell or supply parts to common people for MacIvory III
> > systems, since they need the parts for their support contracts
> > (although they will be happy to sell you a MacIvoryII in a Q950 with
> > keybaord and mouse for about a grand).
> 
> Okay, mister computer science genius.  I know next to nothing about
> LISP.  where should I start?

Well, if you have a few grand and a time machine, how about dialing
back to the late 80s and getting training on a Symbolics machine.

What, you lack a time machine.  Bah.

OK, my opinion is that it is best to start with scheme rather than
lisp.  Part of that is that the best lisp environments are Mac Common
Lisp and Allegro Common Lisp, both of which are extremely expensive.

The other part is that scheme drives the main points home faster.

Now, one must be warned that going to scheme (or lisp for that matter)
is like going from C to C++.  Except, that while you can butcher C++
by using all your own procedural stuff until you get the hang of
things, you can't do that as easily with scheme.

That said, you will need two things to get started.  An environment
and a guide.  In my opinion, the best book is The Structure and
Interpretation of Computer Programs from MIT Press.  Available at
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-4.html 

However, if you want a fast start, Teach Yourself Scheme in Fixnum
Days seems good
(http://gd.tuwien.ac.http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/languages/scheme/tutorial-dsitaram/t-y-scheme.html).
If nothing else, I find it handy to use as a quick reference for IO
type things.

For environment, I'd recommend DrScheme from http://www.drscheme.org/
. It works on MacOS and Solaris, among other things.  I also use STk,
scheme48, SCM, and guile for different things.  I wasn't impressed
with MIT-Scheme.

If you are really set on Lisp, most people say that the best
environment really is a Symbolics machine, and a Symbolics machine is
cheaper than buy Franz Allegro Common Lisp.  The best guide is still
SICP in my opinion, but this means that you are stuck translating
everything from scheme to lisp to actually try, and non of the closure
stuff is going to work properly either.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd