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"woah, this is unlike anything I've seen before." - it so totally isn't, if you know Ruby and to a lesser extent JS, both popular languages. It's a funky syntax
by JulianMorrison 14y ago
"woah, this is unlike anything I've seen before." - it so totally isn't, if you know Ruby and to a lesser extent JS, both popular languages. It's a funky syntax coating on a fairly normal dynamic language, with about three quirks (tail calling, homoiconicity, and call/cc) all of which are more of interest academically than practically.
- calinet6 14y agoThe funky syntax does enough to knock an 18-year-old freshman out of his one-track mind. That's all you need.
- henrikschroder 14y agoMy university also started off the CS programme with Scheme in the mid 90's when I went, and it was a great leveller. Maybe half the kids had been programming a lot before starting uni, and the other half hadn't, and by starting with Scheme, everyone was at the same level, which built a lot of confidence among the ones that hadn't been programming before. Five years later or so, the great teacher that ran the CS intro course quit, someone else took over, and switched to Java. Typical. :-/
- sixbrx 14y agoI don't think "quirks" is the right word for tail calling and homoiconicity, and those are powerful features that I miss in practical situations all the time in lesser languages.
- wfunction 14y ago> JS > a fairly normal dynamic language You call this a "fairly normal dynamic language"? 0 == '' // true 0 == '0' // true '' == '0' // false