Recommended lisps for newbies?

mcandre · 2012-05-25T11:03:48.988430+00:00

The Racket docs are generally pretty good - I recommend downloading and installing Racket and then clicking on the help desk, then searching for "Typed Racket."

throwastevebuscemi · 2012-05-25T00:14:14.046577+00:00

Since no one has ever spelled it out for you, apparently, let me: chivalry, which we will take to be the presumption that women deserve special treatment by virtue of being different and/or weaker than men, is misogynistic because women are actually just regular human beings who don't need your special treatment, and to behave towards them otherwise is to separate them from men, and often in a negative way.

If you are having problems with this, just remember this simple rule: treat everyone nice regardless of their genitals and you'll be OK! If you'd do something for woman, you should probably be willing to do it for a man. If you wouldn't do something for a man, you probably shouldn't do it for a woman either. Follow these simple rules and men and women everywhere will respect and maybe even love you!

throwastevebuscemi · 2012-05-25T00:10:33.460975+00:00

I fail to see how this is related. What does your mom have to do with your future behavior?

Senor_Wilson · 2012-05-24T23:23:16.812019+00:00

Here. With my fiancee.

TAWP · 2012-05-24T17:51:30.130418+00:00

Physicist to the rescue!

Current is the flow of electrons. So if you have a hose, the current corresponds to how much water comes out of it every second. You can measure the current in that case by using a measuring cup under the end of the hose. It is a measure of amount per second.

Voltage is the pressure of the water. You could "feel" this in the hose analogy by putting your palm up against the hose. The pressure will push more or less hard against your hand, depending on how much pressure is in the water. Note that no flow needs to be present for you to measure the voltage. When your hand is against the hose, you feel the pressure, but no water flows.

Senor_Wilson · 2012-05-24T15:00:14.161200+00:00

Good point, have an upvote.

Senor_Wilson · 2012-05-24T14:46:46.659816+00:00

A few times a year. I have curly brown hair, just this side of wavy. Apparently women like it.

mcandre · 2012-05-24T14:12:53.696873+00:00

I'm not an expert on type systems (sadly, just not enough time lately) but my given understanding is that the Typed Racket type system is significantly different from the type system in Haskell, owing principally to the design goal on the part of the Racket developers that the type system should accommodate idiomatic Scheme/Racket style programming instead of getting in the way.

For instance, Racket has a "any" type which is exactly what it sounds like. Similar types in Haskell are much more formal. There are deeper implications to all this which I can't claim to understand about Racket Types being in a hierarchy and Haskell types not being and so forth.

Also, Lazy Racket is a separate Language than Typed Racket. I don't believe one can use them simultaneously. One can, of course, program with thunks and futures in Typed Racket, however.

Senor_Wilson · 2012-05-24T14:00:54.215096+00:00

Sorry, don't buy it. I'm a man who women frequently stop on the street to feel my hair or give random compliments about it. I wash my hair with scentless regular soap. It is all marketing, bro.

mcandre · 2012-05-24T13:56:20.147683+00:00

I see your point, of course, but I'm not sure it should be the most important thing for a new Lisp programmer. A new lisp programmer probably wants 1) a thing that is easy to set up, and 2) a thing with minimal design cruft to get in the way of fundamental Lisp ideas. I love Common Lisp - after programming with it intensely for several months, I've come to see that a lot of its rough edges make a certain sense. However, it is neither 1 nor 2.

Reader macros are also great, but they don't come anywhere near the level of sophistication of Racket's "languages as libraries" system, which you should really check out. In fact, regular Lisp metaprogramming (including reader macros) is somewhat orthogonal to the "languages as libraries" feature of Racket.

People have payed me to program in both Racket and CL, and it doesn't seem obvious to me that I would choose one over the other if given complete freedom; it would depend on the problem I needed to solve. But in terms of pure language design, my preference leans strongly towards Racket. And at RacketCon last year, I met lots of people who felt the same way.

gfixler · 1 day

You can fullscreen emacs and turn off all the menus and scrollbars. That is how I do it.

TomTheScouser · 1 day

I have a question for you, as a person who hasn't experienced depression but has a friend who has. What are we supposed to do? I mean this from two perspectives: is there anything we can do to help? And, if not, then why do you want us to hang out with you or socialize, if it doesn't help?

Waltzinblack · 1 day

I don't think you are actually in the minority.

prossk · 1 day

I appreciate your commenting rather than just downvoting. You make several good points, but to really understand that sort of thing is a serious commitment, and one which I don't think is really necessary. This is especially true of modern cars, which are not amenable to simple fixes.

mcandre · 1 day

Please elaborate. I find your opinions highly suspect.

Look, its fine to prefer interactive programming. It has a lot of advantages AND you can do it with Racket via Emacs, if that is your thing. However, to assert that its the end-all of programming methodologies is, to be frank, idiotic. It is how you like to program. Other people like other styles. It is fine.

I don't even know what to say about a statement like "Scheme is braindamaged." What does that even mean? For one thing, Racket is a pretty large superset of Scheme, with some features completely disjoint. So it isn't clear how it applies. But even then, Scheme, despite its recent revision issues, is a simple, well designed, and explicitly minimal language. I can't point to a very poorly designed feature. Maybe you can?

mcandre · 1 day

Common Lisp has more options, but as a language it doesn't always come out ahead of Racket. Racket is a lot better in a lot of ways. You are right that CL runs on a lot of systems, but that isn't the only thing that matters.

mcandre · 1 day

Racket is very batteries included. It has tons of full features over and above Scheme, good GUI support, pretty good library coverage and is simple to set up. Racket also runs on all major platforms with zero set up. I program a lot in Racket and I program in Common Lisp for a living. Racket is significantly easier to get started with and to work with.

It is a bit of a walled garden (certainly idiomatic Racket would take some work to port to R6RS), but no more than CL is and its got a reasonable FFI, which I've used a bit. On top of that it is significantly better designed than CL for a beginner and arguably for anyone. I code in CL because I have to - if I could choose any language, I'd choose Racket.

I think its silly, furthermore, to worry about Racket as a Scheme dialect. The question is "Is Racket a good Lisp?" The answer to that question is emphatically yes. Racket's meta-programming systems are more powerful and better designed than CLs and its standard features, like pattern matching, are extremely convenient and useful. Racket supports lazy libraries and typed Racket too. If you want to learn about Lisp and programming, Racket is a great environment for doing so. You can literally build new, non-lisp languages in a cleanly designed, well integrated fashion - try that in CL.

TL;DR: Racket is great. Especially for new programmers.

mcandre · 1 day

Clojure is a Lisp. Racket is great for a person new to Lisp. Maybe the best. Zero fiddly configuration, which is, in my experience, a major buzzkill for a person trying something for the first time. Quicklisp makes CL much, much easier to get into, thank god, but it is still more fiddly than Racket.

Clojure is ok, I guess, but still pretty fiddly.

prossk · 1 day

But the world will almost certainly furnish ample pressure in those directions. Dad can push the other way.

prossk · 1 day

I don't have kids yet, but I've never understood this desire to have our children "always be our little X". I don't want my children to be perpetually childish. What will please me most is if my kids grow up to be vibrant, aggressive adults who transcend the need for their parents. Hell, I'd be delighted if my kids grow up and think "Dad's ok, but I'm a much better person than he is." That would be GREAT. That is the point, if any such point exists, of having kids, to turn them into something better than you.

prossk · 1 day

I would rather teach my son or daughter how to be rich enough to pay someone else to fix a car. I mean unless they are really wild about fixing cars (which would be fine, incidentally), why should they spend any time on it? This is how I feel about most things. I have better things to do with my time than deal with the minutia of life.

Abby__Normal · 1 day

Nothing, this is just a post on Answers.com and probably does not reflect dominant behavioral patterns or perceptions in society at large.

Abby__Normal · 1 day

I'm sorry, but if there is any question about a sex partner doing this, you probably don't really want to have sex with them. I mean what kind of idiot has sex with a potentially adversarial partner?

JackIsidore · 1 day

Mankind is banal - if you want to communicate with them, you must also be banal.

JackIsidore · 1 day

I don't have a problem with them exactly, but I do think a lot of them are dopey and oversimplified. Then again, I'm an actual scientist, so my standards are probably different.

commonslip

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commonslip

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