I'm taking a college class that teaches LISP (and Prolog and C++) next
semester.
I've found "Common Lisp, A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation" by
David S. Touretzky and am working through it. I recognize the structures
as linked lists, but I haven't figured out what you can DO with it yet.
The course textbook is
PC SCHEME MINIMANUAL. R. Hull, McGraw Hill, 1991
Assuming it's correct, that seems awfully old!
What other online resources do you recommend?
--
Wendy in Chandler, AZ
http://members.home.com/wendywds
wendywds ** at ** home ** dot ** com
Wendy <········@nospam.home.com> writes:
> I'm taking a college class that teaches LISP (and Prolog and C++) next
> semester.
>
> I've found "Common Lisp, A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation" by
> David S. Touretzky and am working through it. I recognize the structures
> as linked lists, but I haven't figured out what you can DO with it yet.
>
> The course textbook is
> PC SCHEME MINIMANUAL. R. Hull, McGraw Hill, 1991
> Assuming it's correct, that seems awfully old!
>
> What other online resources do you recommend?
People here will argue forever about whether Scheme and Lisp are of the
same language family or different language families, but I assure you that
as a novice, any claim that they are the same language will only hurt you.
My recommendation is that you pick one implementation and stick to it so
you learn reliably consistent information until you are skilled enough to
understand when differences you are seeing are due to the language, due
to the implementation, or due to whatever confusions a novice naturally
brings to the table while learning.
In that regard, I recommend that you treat Lisp and Scheme as utterly
different. There is some overlap, but the differences will, if you'll
pardon the punnish expression, throw you for a loop.
If you're using Scheme for the course, I recommend you talk to the folks
in comp.lang.scheme for hints on getting a corresponding implementation.
If instead you want to learn Lisp (and it shouldn't come to you as any
surprise that we're all Lisp fans on this boat), we welcome you to the
community and I personally think Touretzky's introductory text is a fine
one to help you get started, but you should pick a Lisp implementation to
match.
Lisp "getting started" info, including pointers to various implementations
you can download can be had at the Association of Lisp Users (ALU) web
site, http://www.alu.org/ ... You'll actually find a bit of info on
Scheme there, too, because of this eternal conflict we have about whether
our cousins are still "family". If you have specific questions after
browsing there, do feel free to ask back here.
Of course, if you're really ambitious, it's ok to do both of these if
you are just careful about your bookkeeping and keeping track of which
interactions you had with Scheme and which with Lisp.
Good luck.
--Kent
In article <······················@news1.rdc1.az.home.com>,
Wendy <········@nospam.home.com> wrote:
>
>I'm taking a college class that teaches LISP (and Prolog and C++) next
>semester.
>
>I've found "Common Lisp, A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation" by
>David S. Touretzky and am working through it. I recognize the structures
>as linked lists, but I haven't figured out what you can DO with it yet.
>
>The course textbook is
>PC SCHEME MINIMANUAL. R. Hull, McGraw Hill, 1991
>Assuming it's correct, that seems awfully old!
>
>What other online resources do you recommend?
The language required for your coursework seems to be
Scheme, not the very different dialect/language
described in the Touretzky book.
A well-acclaimed online resource for Scheme is
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html
but there are others -- use Google or, if the results
therefrom aren't satisfactory, the newsgroup
comp.lang.scheme.
--d
Dorai Sitaram wrote:
> The language required for your coursework seems to be
> Scheme, not the very different dialect/language
> described in the Touretzky book.
It's listed in the syllabus as Lisp/Scheme and I didn't realize
there was so much of a difference. I've emailed the instructor for
clarification, and will take myself over to comp.lang.scheme and bother
them instead. :)
Thanks!!
--
Wendy in Chandler, AZ
http://members.home.com/wendywds
wendywds ** at ** home ** dot ** com
Wendy wrote:
> It's listed in the syllabus as Lisp/Scheme and I didn't realize
> there was so much of a difference. I've emailed the instructor for
> clarification, and will take myself over to comp.lang.scheme and bother
> them instead. :)
First of all, no bother. Second, many instructors of language survey
type courses don't see much of a difference between the two languages
either. This is usually because their own familiarity with the
language(s) is at the depth necessary to get through a language survey
course (because they've been hired for their ability to teach other
things). Even those who work with the languages occasionally disagree
whether or not they're the same or different :-). In any case, don't be
disappointed in the answers given by this group if it turns out that the
instructor isn't very aware of the differences (in fact, send him here
if he needs more training!). Even so, you're still probably a bit
better off using a programming system closer to what you'll be using in
class.
faa
>>>>> "Wendy" == Wendy <········@nospam.home.com> writes:
[...]
Wendy> The course textbook is PC SCHEME MINIMANUAL. R. Hull,
Wendy> McGraw Hill, 1991 Assuming it's correct, that seems awfully
Wendy> old!
I don't know the book, but I do remember PC scheme. That's how I got
into Lisp in the 80's. It is a compact R3S (?) Scheme that can run
in as little as 512k under MS-DOS with an Emacs-like editor/IDE.
It might be dated, but it'll do for learning. You can do most of
SICP (see below) with it on what must now be $30 hardware (or $50 in
notebook form!). But those constraints probably don't apply to you
if you are in the US.
Wendy> What other online resources do you recommend?
If you will be using Scheme:
-- Try to ask in comp.lang.scheme for pointers
-- Take a peek at http://sicp.arsdigita.org/text/sicp/
-- If you have a high bandwidth connection, get the movies of the
lectures (both by the authors of SICP and others) from http://64.64.103.140/
cheers,
BM