Scheme 9 Book
Nils M Holm
freely available on my web site.
--
Nils M Holm <n m h @ t 3 x . o r g> -- http://t3x.org/nmh/
Benjamin L. Russell
<news...@t3x.org> wrote:
>The Scheme 9 Book (and most others I have written) are now
>freely available on my web site.
Thank you; I look forward to reading them (in parts) soon: in
particular, Sketchy LISP (see http://t3x.org/sketchy/vol1/).
Your thoughts on Everyday Madness (see
http://t3x.org/life/madness.html) bring to mind the following article
by Mark Tarver, inventor of Qi, on a related topic:
The Bipolar Lisp Programmer
http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm
(According to Tarver, most Lisp (or Scheme, in my opinion) programmers
seem to share certain basic personality attributes; in particular,
brilliance and a low threshold for boredom. Some of Tarver's points
seem to apply to many Scheme programmers I know as well, so I just
thought that perhaps you might find his post interesting.)
Tarver also has a related article on Taoist philosophy, which seems to
deal issues related to your points, listed on his "Presentations and
Code Studies" section (see
http://www.lambdassociates.org/presentations.htm).
Incidentally, IIRC, you wrote sometime earlier on this newsgroup that
you were moving away from programming language theory; was this
because of the R6RS changes to Scheme? Forgive me if not, but
otherwise, why not investigate one of the R5RS implementations as an
alternative? I read your comments for your vote against R6RS (see
http://www.r6rs.org/ratification/results.html#X94), and you seemed to
have a well-thought-out opinion (in particular, the reference to the
following first sentence of the introduction to every Scheme Report
that you had read so far):
>`Programming languages should be designed not by piling feature on
>top of feature, but by removing the weaknesses and restrictions that
>make additional features appear necessary.'
It seems a shame to lose a contributor such as you from the Scheme
community....
-- Benjamin L. Russell
--
Benjamin L. Russell / DekuDekuplex at Yahoo dot com
http://dekudekuplex.wordpress.com/
Translator/Interpreter / Mobile: +011 81 80-3603-6725
"Furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto."
-- Matsuo Basho^
Nils M Holm
> >The Scheme 9 Book (and most others I have written) are now
> >freely available on my web site.
>
> particular, Sketchy LISP (see http://t3x.org/sketchy/vol1/).
You are welcome. I am happy about every person who finds it useful.
> Your thoughts on Everyday Madness (see
> http://t3x.org/life/madness.html) bring to mind the following article
> by Mark Tarver, inventor of Qi, on a related topic:
>
> The Bipolar Lisp Programmer
> http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm
I have read the essay some time ago and found it quite interesting.
The type of personality he describes certainly exists and the way
the machinery treats them is tragic. We choose to waste the creativity
of these people and make them feel miserable at the same time. This is
a lose-lose situation -- madness, indeed. Some of the side notes in
the essay are straight to the point but, unfortunately, the conclusion
("life is what you make of it") is a bit thin IMO.
> Incidentally, IIRC, you wrote sometime earlier on this newsgroup that
> you were moving away from programming language theory; was this
> because of the R6RS changes to Scheme?
I do not want to dive too deep into the details, but no, I would not
base such a decision on something as trivial as R6RS. As Tarver wrote,
life is what you make of it, and I simply feel the need to move on.
> Forgive me if not, but
> otherwise, why not investigate one of the R5RS implementations as an
> alternative?
For now I will concentrate on more important things, but I may
come back later. In the mean time I will stick to my own R4RS pet
implementation, Scheme 9 from Empty Space, and do some casual
programming and maintenance for the fun of it.
Maybe R7RS will be based on R5RS instead of R6RS and just copy
some of the more reasonable features of R6RS. In this case I may
have another look.
> It seems a shame to lose a contributor such as you from the Scheme
> community....
Thank you! (Although I think there are much more dedicated contributors.)