Re: Scheme syntax vs. other languages [was: Re: Appreciation / Financial support]

[Tim McNamara]

On Jun 6, 2012, at 6:22 PM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> 
> On 05/06/12 08:53, David Kastrup wrote:
>> I would doubt that this would have been the fault of Scheme.  More
>> likely a problem of the Scheme/LilyPond interface choices, but those
>> choices don't go away when replacing Scheme.
> 
> No, it was the fault of the unfamiliar Scheme syntax.  A colleague used to 
> working with Scheme was able to solve the problems I encountered trivially 
> without reference to anything LilyPond-specific.

Hmm.  The way you wrote that, it appears that the fault is not with Scheme but 
the with one's unfamiliarity with Scheme.  This is certainly *my* problem with 
understanding the Scheme-based extensions in Lilypond.  And yet when I look at 
them I can intuit some sense of the structure and processes of the extensions 
(I have a little experience with eLisp, which helps just slightly).

Despite all the parentheses which do make one feel a bit cross-eyed, Scheme is 
designed to be a simple and quickly learned language which is firmly grounded 
in the principles of good computer programming- one of the reasons it is used 
in teaching beginning programmers at MIT.  using "pretty-printing" makes the 
syntax a bit easier for humans to read.  The first few chapters of SICP would 
probably be very helpful.

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-10.html

There is also HTDP which is Scheme based (although they now call their specific 
version "Racket").

http://www.htdp.org/

In the early chapters, which is all the farther I have gotten, SICP is more 
about Scheme programming and HTDP is more about the general process of thinking 
about what computer programs accomplish and how to design the logic to achieve 
that goal.  So far I am not managing to learn the syntax rules in an afternoon, 
though.  :-(  But then I am 52 and don't learn as quickly as I once did, and my 
only computer programming class was one semester of a general ed course which 
included only Fortran and punch cards ca. 1979.