From: Bryant Brandon
Subject: Trying to convince my CS teacher to use lisp.
Date: 
Message-ID: <72578412771D20B4.06814512B390888C.78F421F83BFCA42C@library-proxy.airnews.net>
   I'm about to graduate, but before I go I would like to set my CS
teacher on the right track.  (away from PASCAL)  I would like him to use
common lisp since it's a great language and can do anything.  However, he
mentioned scheme, which is nice also.
   So, should I recommend Common Lisp or Scheme and what brand should I
use?  This is a computer lab using a bunch of old PC's and a couple of new
Pentium machines, so it needs to be something cheap/free, stable, low
mantinence, runnable under DOS or windows 3.1 minimum, and hopefully
downloadable from the internet.
   I thank you for any help.
   Please also cc by email.


B.B.       --I am not a goat!

From: Christopher Browne
Subject: Re: Trying to convince my CS teacher to use lisp.
Date: 
Message-ID: <6dpa9f$758@hector.sabre.com>
On Thu, 05 Mar 1998 17:47:28 -0600, Bryant Brandon <········@airmail.net> wrote:
>   I'm about to graduate, but before I go I would like to set my CS
>teacher on the right track.  (away from PASCAL)  I would like him to use
>common lisp since it's a great language and can do anything.  However, he
>mentioned scheme, which is nice also.
>   So, should I recommend Common Lisp or Scheme and what brand should I
>use?  This is a computer lab using a bunch of old PC's and a couple of new
>Pentium machines, so it needs to be something cheap/free, stable, low
>mantinence, runnable under DOS or windows 3.1 minimum, and hopefully
>downloadable from the internet.
I think you're liable to have trouble getting many Common LISP
implementations up and running on low-memory Windoze PCs; it is indeed
probably a better choice to look at Scheme.

Here are some links to various and sundry Scheme implementations, many
of which can indeed run on DOS/Windows:

<item><url url="http://martigny.ai.mit.edu/scheme-home.html"
name="Scheme home page">

<item><url url="http://ftp-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/SCM.html" name="SCM
home page">

<item><url url="http://webrum.uni-mannheim.de/sowi/fs29/w3/index.html"
name="Phantom - Small memory model Scheme">

Documentation:

<item><url url="http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/r4rs_toc.html"
name="Scheme Specifications - HTML version">

<item><label id="SICP"> <url url="http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp"
name="The Best Way to Learn Scheme (SICP)">

<item><url
url="ftp://ftp.cs.utexas.edu/pub/garbage/cs345/schintro-v14/schintro_toc.html"
name="An Introduction to Scheme and its Implementation">

<item><url url="http://www.schemers.com/tsg.html" name="The Schemer's
Guide">
-- 
But what can you do with it?  -- ubiquitous cry from Linux-user partner.
(Submitted by Andy Pearce, ···@hpopd.pwd.hp.com)
········@hex.net -  <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
From: Christopher Browne
Subject: Re: Trying to convince my CS teacher to use lisp.
Date: 
Message-ID: <6dpa9f$759@hector.sabre.com>
On Thu, 05 Mar 1998 17:47:28 -0600, Bryant Brandon <········@airmail.net> wrote:
>   I'm about to graduate, but before I go I would like to set my CS
>teacher on the right track.  (away from PASCAL)  I would like him to use
>common lisp since it's a great language and can do anything.  However, he
>mentioned scheme, which is nice also.
>   So, should I recommend Common Lisp or Scheme and what brand should I
>use?  This is a computer lab using a bunch of old PC's and a couple of new
>Pentium machines, so it needs to be something cheap/free, stable, low
>mantinence, runnable under DOS or windows 3.1 minimum, and hopefully
>downloadable from the internet.

I think you're liable to have trouble getting many Common LISP
implementations up and running on low-memory Windoze PCs; it is indeed
probably a better choice to look at Scheme.

Here are some links to various and sundry Scheme implementations, many
of which can indeed run on DOS/Windows:

<item><url url="http://martigny.ai.mit.edu/scheme-home.html"
name="Scheme home page">

<item><url url="http://ftp-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/SCM.html" name="SCM
home page">

<item><url url="http://webrum.uni-mannheim.de/sowi/fs29/w3/index.html"
name="Phantom - Small memory model Scheme">

Documentation:

<item><url url="http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/r4rs_toc.html"
name="Scheme Specifications - HTML version">

<item><label id="SICP"> <url url="http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp"
name="The Best Way to Learn Scheme (SICP)">

<item><url
url="ftp://ftp.cs.utexas.edu/pub/garbage/cs345/schintro-v14/schintro_toc.html"
name="An Introduction to Scheme and its Implementation">

<item><url url="http://www.schemers.com/tsg.html" name="The Schemer's
Guide">

<item><url url="http://www.schemers.com/tsgcpp.html" name="The Schemer's
Guide To C++">


-- 
But what can you do with it?  -- ubiquitous cry from Linux-user partner.
(Submitted by Andy Pearce, ···@hpopd.pwd.hp.com)
········@hex.net -  <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
From: Larry Hunter
Subject: Re: Trying to convince my CS teacher to use lisp.
Date: 
Message-ID: <rbvhtr6e7q.fsf@work.nlm.nih.gov>
········@airmail.net (Bryant Brandon) writes:

   I would like him to use common lisp since it's a great language and can
   do anything.  However, he mentioned scheme, which is nice also.
   
   So, should I recommend Common Lisp or Scheme and what brand should I use?
   This is a computer lab using a bunch of old PC's and a couple of new
   Pentium machines, so it needs to be something cheap/free, stable, low
   mantinence, runnable under DOS or windows 3.1 minimum, and hopefully
   downloadable from the internet.

The last time I needed a small, fast, free lisp to run on an old PC, I chose
MIT Scheme (aka c-shceme).  It actually ran a fairly large program quite well
on 4MB 386's!  However, I believe the last update (version 7.3) was done in
1993. 

Lots of information about (free) lisp and scheme implementations, as well as
copies of many of the compilers can be found at the CMU AI repository:

 http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/repository.html

Good luck!  

Larry
From: ······@exploited.barmy.army
Subject: Re: Trying to convince my CS teacher to use lisp.
Date: 
Message-ID: <6dp7rm$458$1@Masala.CC.UH.EDU>
In article <··················································@library-proxy.airnews.net>,
Bryant Brandon <········@airmail.net> wrote:
>   I'm about to graduate, but before I go I would like to set my CS
>teacher on the right track.  (away from PASCAL)  I would like him to use
>common lisp since it's a great language and can do anything.  However, he
>mentioned scheme, which is nice also.

You have my admiration and my wishes for the best of luck.


>   So, should I recommend Common Lisp or Scheme and what brand should I
>use?  This is a computer lab using a bunch of old PC's and a couple of new
>Pentium machines, so it needs to be something cheap/free, stable, low
>mantinence, runnable under DOS or windows 3.1 minimum, and hopefully
>downloadable from the internet.

For teaching, I'd say go with Scheme.  It's very elegant and
consistent, and the best computer science book EVER WRITTEN
(Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Abelson
and Sussman) uses Scheme.  If your professor cares, or knows
anything about computer science (some professors do not!) then
show him the book, let him read it, and let it do most of the
arguing for you.

When you do talk to him, be sure to bring up the benefits of functional
programming (reliability, high levels of abstraction, the ability to
use formal methods to verify your algorithms in a straightforward way),
which Scheme supports well (it's tail recursive).

Hopefully this will convince him.

As for implementations, you've got a pretty decent selection of
choices.  For older machines, I recommend PCS-Geneva.  It's free,
has an integrated editor, runs under DOS and has very good performance.  
I think it's more or less R4RS complaint.  It may take a bit
of getting used to since the editor works more like Emacs than DOS
editors, but after that it's a breeze.

If you have 32 megs of RAM and Windows then you can use the PLT
system from Rice University.  Again it is free and available
for download, and it is even better than PCS-Geneva.  Very easy to use,
integrated editor, and I think it's R4RS conformant and even goes beyond
that.

In both programs you get extra functions that go beyond R4RS and
integrated Scheme-aware editors (parenthesis matching and source
code formatting [at least source code formatting in PCS-Geneva]).
And both seemed quite stable (I used PCS-Geneva far more than PLT).

There's a page with Scheme implementations (might be in the FAQ), you
should find both of those (and more) on that page.


PS: For the record, I program in Common Lisp and prefer it to
    Scheme for one reason -- it has more functionality.  With
    Scheme, I'm constantly reinventing the wheel (at least as of
    R4RS).  For learning purposes, having to reinvent the wheel is not
    a problem (heck, it's what you are doing when you learn anyway).

>   I thank you for any help.
>   Please also cc by email.
>
>
>B.B.       --I am not a goat!

Done.

My email address has been altered to avoid spam.  Actually
the whole mail system is funny so I probably can't receive any email
here anyway.
From: ······@exploited.barmy.army
Subject: Re: Trying to convince my CS teacher to use lisp.
Date: 
Message-ID: <6dp8l9$6k$1@Masala.CC.UH.EDU>
In article <············@masala.cc.uh.edu>,
 <······@exploited.barmy.army> wrote:

[Snip]

>In both programs you get extra functions that go beyond R4RS and
>integrated Scheme-aware editors (parenthesis matching and source
>code formatting [at least source code formatting in PCS-Geneva]).
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The above was not to imply that there wasn't source code formatting in
PLT, just that I didn't remember if there was but knew that there was in
PCS-Geneva.

I'll try to be more careful when I post next time and sorry to the 
folks at PLT if I inadvertently spread FUD about their superb
system.