[Fsedu-developers] Re: Stuff for the SchemeBook

[Stephen Compall]

Peter Minten <address@hidden> writes:

> The SchemeBook should have a big style guide chapter. Scheme is a
> programming language that gives the programmer full control and has
> many different ways to accomplish a task (for traversing a list:
> recursion, iteration and applicative programming (map)). With so much
> power it's easy to use kludgy ways to reach your goal, resulting in
> buggy programs. For example one often has the choice between using
> iterative programming style (assignment) or functional programming
> style (result passing). As every good LISP programmer knows functional
> programming style is often the best choice since assignments make code
> harder to following. And that's just one of the style issues.

I think this would be excellent as a reference chapter at the end.
For an example, see the documentation tips in the elisp reference.

Also, in the heavy examples, we will be careful to show different ways
of doing things, though not all at once, and point out which is the
Right Way.  That would be where style fits in with the rest of the
tutorial.

> A design chapter is also nice. Designing Scheme programs is different
> from designing for example Java programming. Matters like when to use
> classes (and even more important, when not) are quite important for a
> beginning Scheme programmer.

Same as above.

> Finally attention to the more important Guile supported SRFI's that
> aren't covered elsewhere in the book would be nice. For example the
> sharp-comma (#,()) can be quite useful for reading in common objects
> or serialization.

...same as above.  And that's *hash*-comma! ;)

Here is the dangerous thing about the book.  We can't approach it from
the view of the fundamentals, that is s-expressions and evaluation,
even though everything follows from that, and it is much simpler *once
you know it* to think of everything that way.  I am trying to
introduce retvals vs side effects early, by using the Hello World
string printout.  Return values by themselves are dangerous enough.
Then there's self-evaluating objects, which are the core of
everything, and *that's* dangerous, because you have to go right into
how a string returns itself.

Anyway I found the computer shop in Grantham, and on Sunday or Monday
I will look for the plug adaptor I need to get my computer up again.
Alternatively, I sorta know someone else who has an extra plug adaptor
who will let me borrow it, or she said so at least.

Walking on eggshells here,

--
Stephen Compall or s11 or sirian

Misfortunes arrive on wings and leave on foot.

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