Re: [Chicken-users] YADT: yet another documentation thread

[Ivan Raikov]

  I am not sure I want to compare the transition of ML -> Scheme with
for example Python -> Scheme, because ML and Scheme evolved along
similar trajectories -- Peter Landin's ISWIM family of programming
languages, which gave rise to ML, is a lambda-calculus based language
with lexical scope very similar to early Scheme. In fact, I think
learning Standard ML as a prelude to learning Scheme is a pretty good
approach, because ML is similarly minimalistic and the ML type system
is like a set of training wheels that forces the programmer to learn
the idioms of functional programming, especially the way recursive
datatypes encourage the use of structural induction in your
algorithms. Whereas if I were coming from Python, chances are I would
have been wasting time messing around with tinyclos and the other
object-oriented systems, because during my Python "phase" I was
indoctrinated that "everything is an object," so it took a while to
realize that lambda is the ultimate abstraction. So I still think that
a short tutorial on building a simple interpreter, ala SICP, might be
a better way to go.


   -Ivan


Mark Fredrickson <address@hidden> writes:

> With a high probibility that Chicken users will be coming from other
> PLs, I think a series of "Chicken for Python Programmers", "Chicken
> for Ruby Programmers", etc could be very helpful. Where are my hashes?
> How do I do string concatenation? Where are my objects? These
> questions, and more, should be answered.
>
> I suggest we draft Hans (http://4.flowsnake.org/) for the Python
> doc. :-)
>
> I'll add these tasks to the Wiki.