On Jun 18, 2007, at 8:20 PM, Thomas Hicks wrote:
At 02:02 PM 6/18/2007, Warner wrote:
As I say in my blog one of the reasons to learn a new language is
just that - to see how another language approaches problems so that
I'm not stymied into thinking "one way is the only way". In other
terms, because I have a hammer everything looks like a nail.
[snip]....
On that note then (and it's beginning to sound more and more like I
should learn scheme first). What would be a good (little) project to
do in scheme. Just suggestions please as I will take them and then
come up with something that I can leverage for myself.
Here are some of the things that interest me:
- Code generation
- Searching
- personal information management
- community software - essentially connecting people in
interesting ways
I don't know how any of this could possibly relate to a new language,
yet, but I plan on finding out.
One thing missing from your list (which I know you are interested in)
is DSLs. Lisp, the direct ancestor of Scheme, was the grandaddy
of extensible languages, and many DSLs have been implemented in it.
Maybe something along those lines.....
OR...Lisp/Scheme is also famous as an implementation language
for AI and other "intelligent" systems. You might consider adding
some "smarts" to an existing webapp or program by embedding a Scheme
interpreter in your Java or using one to build a rules system.
A Scheme which compiles to Java VM bytecode (such as
Kawa http://www.gnu.org/software/kawa/) might
be ideal for this (caveat: I haven't tried it myself).
Ahh yes, completely forgot about the whole AI angle for Lisp (I
remembered reading about that quite a while ago). And yes, I am
definitely interested in DSLs ;-), for some reason that left my head
while I was trying to think of projects. And in general I like
language design (but I haven't gotten to that stage, yet ;-).
[snip]...
Now, back to your original point, I do think that functional
languages are becoming more important and I should *know* about them
and how they do things so I can see how to make things better in my
current environment (one way or another).
Hmmm....my impression is that functional languages had their heyday
in the late 80s and are currently relegated to niche programming.
That's not to say that their study is not important for exactly the
reasons
you implied in your first paragraph. Most of them also greatly help
you to
really grok the power of recursion.
There was an article that my co-worker James sent me (that I can't
find) that talked about functional languages and the new multi-core
architectures and how learning a functional language wouldn't be a
bad thing. (If you do a google on functional language and multi-core
you'll see what I'm talking about). That's one of the things driving
this, but it still is about time for me to pick up a new language
that I'm completely unfamiliar with. I feel that Ruby is still there,
but not as daunting now that I've done Groovy. And from what everyone
has said so far (here and elsewhere) Scheme would be a good starting
point.
So, any good Scheme books?
-warner
regards,
-tom
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Warner Onstine - Programmer/Author
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