Re: Scheme as a religion


Tom Lord wrote:
> To the other replies you are getting I'll add some hacker lore
> and historic perspective:
>
this was quite interesting, thanks.

.. If you venture into Church, meditate a bit about
> Strachey, gosh rest his soul. Great Scott, man, these folks
> drew the first maps.

No meditation involved. Just wipipedia and google I'm afraid. Alonzo
Church, Christopher Strachey,Guy Steele, Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay
Sussman. And Richard Stallman, Donald Knuth, Alan Kay, Ivan Sutherland,
Alan Turing, and Kristen_Nygaard for good measure. I like history: I
tend to read at least blurbs of creators whenever I star to use a
language, e.g.:, Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, James Gosling, Bjarne
Stroustup.
>

> Because everything was so new every research institution was
> pretty much on its own. There was no "download GCC" let alone
> "pick one of N browsers that contain a Javascript interpreter".

I remember those days. : ).


>
> Guy Steele, who you may have heard of from Java fame, was a grad
> student at MIT in the early seventies. He was just down the
> hall from and interacting with --- well, half the damn world as
> far as computer science is concerned.

I know that some of the frequenters of this boad went to MIT, and so
now I'm curious if any of them got to be involved with the thought
processes that went on, with ither Stelle, Sussman, or Abelson.
Entirely off the main topic of this thread, I admit, but I am curious.
Being present at the beginning of any major revolution (at the source
of the revolution) is something to be proud of and cherish.


> One thing not to ignore is Steele's thesis, available at a
> library near you.

I'm having a little trouble finding this, because I'm not sure what
it's called. Care to enlighten?


>
> Of course, while you're rummaging through the stacks, you better
> go read the "lambda the ultimate...." papers. There's enough
> on-line about these already that that's all I'll say.

I've browsed through these, but not in depths, this summer. Having used
Scheme more, I may appreciate them more now.

Let us know when you
> grok how Scheme relates to something called "Hewitt's Actors
> Model". Talk about programming patterns....

I need to do my research here. From as far as I can tell, you are
referring to logic programming & Prolog based systems?
>
> You asked about "Scheme as religion"? That's where it started
> -- it's discovery/invention struck a really deep note. Nobody
> expected that. 14 years after it was written Steele's *thesis*
> was still being handed around in the hacker undergound as a work
> of art.

Thanks for the history. Coming later in this timeline, it's good to
know how things evolved before.
>

>
> 1) GET OFF YOUR PARENTHESIS PHOBIA AND LEARN EMACS. No, knowing
> how to move the cursor around doesn't count as knowing Emacs --
> that counts as knowing how to use Emacs as if it were VI.

I don't really understand how learning Emacs has to do with the
parentheses issue. I've bene using a syntax checker that closes parens
when I use the computer (UCB Scheme). When I jot down code on the back
of things when I'm away from my computer, I'm slowly realizing it's not
so much of an issue. But I don't get the emacs part.
>
> Look, yr program source texts represent trees. Parens make it
> really simple for your text editor to perform tree transforms.
> Learn emacs really well. Spend 6m on it. Learn the lisp modes.

Can you recommend an Emacs emulation for XP? Here is the most prominent
one in a google search:
http://math.claremontmckenna.edu/ALee/emacs/emacs.html
So I'll go with this one unless those more experienced than I chime in
further.

> What separates the true scheme hackers from most (not all)
> other hackers is a deep care for quality.
>
> Go read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Repair".

You mean "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenence"? I'm read that
one. But I can't find "zen and the art of motorcycle repair" on amazon.

>
> Lemme add the word "craft".
>
> Lemme add the phrase "human scale".
>
> Do with those what you will.
>
> Scheme is a big ball of mud but, with these hints, you can
> start to grok why this particular mud smells so good to some
> of us. (Plus, you can start to read all the *later* and
> often very interesting Scheme literature I haven't given you
> hints about.)
>

Yes, well, I appreciate your time and I'll do what I can.

.

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