4 ms·

The whole world should be using Scheme

8 points by Ixiaus 17y ago

Just a silly post, nothing very stimulating. I have spent the last month and a half learning Clozure Common Lisp. A cool implementation to be sure (it has an amazing wealth of integration with Obj-C on the Mac which is my platform). But, holy god Common Lisp is messy! SLIME? Why? I just want the interpreter running in a buffer along side the file I am editing! No need for all of the crazy connection routines. Scheme is slim, and so much more intuitive! QUACK + mzscheme is a breeze to get running in Emacs, loads quicker, and feels cleaner... </random_thoughts>

jacquesm 17y ago
That's a pretty broad claim! The number of LISP dialects and derivatives is pretty impressive, someone ought to make a table that compares them side-by-side so you can select the one that is right for what you want to do. How broadly applicable is the QUACK + mzscheme combination ? Would you be able to write a web application in it that serves up dynamic content to a large number of users (a la HN, or larger, and without peeking at the arc sources ;) ) ? Would you be able to make it run on an embedded platform ? Use it as a scripting language from the command line to access a database or a filesystem and do a bunch of stuff ? These are all common and everyday activities and I'm wondering how difficult it would be to put scheme to work on problems like that.
- Ixiaus 17y ago
  True, I was having an emotional moment after getting QUACK + mzscheme setup. As far as I know, the QUACK + mzscheme combo should work wherever you can have a running instance of Emacs and mzscheme. It seems to do the job pretty well. Running mzscheme with the errortrace argument and a few modifiers returns a full debug backtrace for errors... Worth while questions though. I do, however, find the cleanliness of a programming language an attractor/deterrent to my learning it. Common Lisp is pretty crufty. I imagine Scheme is certainly better suited to running as an embedded than CL. Either way, learning the language first is my concern for educational reasons; making it useful is my secondary concern.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    > learning the language first is my concern for educational reasons; making it useful is my secondary concern. I'm in the opposite boat, I have to somehow make my time earn me a living, it's hard to justify time out for pure educational reasons (even if I do smuggle a bit here and there). Great to see you happy about learning a new language though, you can never have enough of those under your belt. Especially when they're off the beaten path.
    - Ixiaus 17y ago
      Yeah, I have no debt and no dependencies so I left my job to pursue self education and personal projects. Thanks for the vote of confidence :)
david 17y ago
Slime is one of the things I miss most when writing scheme.
teeja 17y ago
There'll never be a language that "the whole world should be using." What's optimal for one problem WILL be a poor choice for another problem. Not to mention wide variations in the capabilities of programmers.

8 points by Ixiaus 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago

That's a pretty broad claim! The number of LISP dialects and derivatives is pretty impressive, someone ought to make a table that compares them side-by-side so you can select the one that is right for what you want to do. How broadly applicable is the QUACK + mzscheme combination ? Would you be able to write a web application in it that serves up dynamic content to a large number of users (a la HN, or larger, and without peeking at the arc sources ;) ) ? Would you be able to make it run on an embedded platform ? Use it as a scripting language from the command line to access a database or a filesystem and do a bunch of stuff ? These are all common and everyday activities and I'm wondering how difficult it would be to put scheme to work on problems like that.

Ixiaus 17y ago
True, I was having an emotional moment after getting QUACK + mzscheme setup. As far as I know, the QUACK + mzscheme combo should work wherever you can have a running instance of Emacs and mzscheme. It seems to do the job pretty well. Running mzscheme with the errortrace argument and a few modifiers returns a full debug backtrace for errors... Worth while questions though. I do, however, find the cleanliness of a programming language an attractor/deterrent to my learning it. Common Lisp is pretty crufty. I imagine Scheme is certainly better suited to running as an embedded than CL. Either way, learning the language first is my concern for educational reasons; making it useful is my secondary concern.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  > learning the language first is my concern for educational reasons; making it useful is my secondary concern. I'm in the opposite boat, I have to somehow make my time earn me a living, it's hard to justify time out for pure educational reasons (even if I do smuggle a bit here and there). Great to see you happy about learning a new language though, you can never have enough of those under your belt. Especially when they're off the beaten path.
  - Ixiaus 17y ago
    Yeah, I have no debt and no dependencies so I left my job to pursue self education and personal projects. Thanks for the vote of confidence :)

david 17y ago

Slime is one of the things I miss most when writing scheme.

teeja 17y ago

There'll never be a language that "the whole world should be using." What's optimal for one problem WILL be a poor choice for another problem. Not to mention wide variations in the capabilities of programmers.