[Abqlispscheme] Scheme article on Linux.com

[Daryl Lee]

I have marked my calendar for the 20th; hopefully I'll be able to attend the
meeting.

As the introduction to the article hinted, there are applications ready at
hand (GIMP, Emacs) that depend on Scheme and (e)Lisp for their behavior, and
that using the built-in extensibility of those apps was not as scary a
proposition as might be supposed.  The example I gave was actually a rewrite
of an eLisp extension I originally wrote to see if I could figure out how to
bend Emacs to my will to do something useful.

Sometimes the best way to learn something is to write about it.  At least
none of the commenters said that I totally misunderstood my topic. :)

Jim Prewett wrote:
> Hi Daryl,
> 
> Let me second Daniel's welcome and invitation to our next meeting - We'd 
> love to have you join us!  I'm personally happy to have people just chat 
> with us over the mailing list if a monthly meeting is too much to commit 
> to. :)
> 
> Thanks for the pointer to the article!  I'm cureous what others think of 
> guile; I've never played with it myself (except for a very brief hacking 
> with GIMP :)  Does guile make the Schemers happy?  (Is it "real" scheme?)
> 
> I was a little disappointed that the article compared Scheme with Emacs 
> Lisp, not Common Lisp - Emacs lisp is a dinosaur, a Coelacanth if you 
> will, somehow still around today (but arguably shouldn't be :P )... 
> 
> One thing I find extremely frustrating with these introduction to Lisp 
> articles is that they usually show you CAR and CDR, LIST, DEFUN, then they 
> expect you to understand how to take that and make a "real" application.  
> I'll tell you, when I started with Lisp (Scheme in UNM's CS 251 course), I 
> HATED EVERY MINUTE!  I didn't understand why I couldn't just write a "for 
> loop":  The best part is that I could have written a for loop, using DO, 
> LOOP, ITERATE, or my own special construct (macro) and that I 
> fundamentally didn't want to: MAPCAR is actually a good thing (TM) :)
> 
> If you are interested in a very practical starter for Common Lisp, I would 
> highly recommend that you take a look at Peter Siebel's (IMO Excellent!) 
> book titled "Practical Common Lisp".  The full text of the book is freely 
> available on Peter's website at: http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ . 
> 
> Good luck & we hope to see you in a couple of weeks!,
> Jim
> 
> James E. Prewett                    Jim at Prewett.org download at hpc.unm.edu 
> Systems Team Leader           LoGS: http://www.hpc.unm.edu/~download/LoGS/ 
> Designated Security Officer         OpenPGP key: pub 1024D/31816D93    
> HPC Systems Engineer III   UNM HPC  505.277.8210
> 
> On Thu, 3 Apr 2008, Daniel Lyons wrote:
> 
>> On Apr 3, 2008, at 8:42 AM, Daryl Lee wrote:
>>
>>> Greetings:
>>>
>>> I've been lurking on this list for a few weeks.  I'm fairly new to
>>> Lisp/Scheme, and just had an introductory article published on  
>>> linux.com
>>> (http://www.linux.com/feature/130717).  The flurry of comments on  
>>> the value
>>> of Lisp/Scheme itself is very interesting to me, as a newbie.  I  
>>> thought
>>> this group might find it interesting, as well.
>>
>> Good to hear from you Daryl! I hope we'll be seeing you at our next  
>> meeting on the 20th.
>>
>> It looks like a nice intro article based on a quick glance. I would  
>> say the remarks in those comments are more or less the standard set.
>>
>> There was a post on ycombinator this morning which I think was pretty  
>> insightful about this phenomenon: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=153812
>>
>> -- 
>> Daniel Lyons
>> http://www.storytotell.org -- Tell It!
>>
>>
>>
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>>
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Daryl Lee
www.daryllee.com
Open the Present -- it's a Gift!