[Edu-sig] Python for CS101

[Arthur]

John writes -

>Of course implementing something like a queue which has state 
>(side-effects) is not pure functional programming, but real LISP 
>programmers don't worry too much about that.

John sounds like a real LISP programmer (he's being hiding that from us
until now ;) - and I am interpreting him to be confirming the point Peter
Seibel is making in the book I referenced, i.e. that many folks know of LISP
via Scheme and therefore tend to understand LISP to be more purist
functional than it is in practice. 

My impetus in approaching LISP would be to become a better Python programmer
(presuming that it is awfully late in the game to try to become anything of
a LISP programmer), and that does have something to do, in my mind, with
more exposure to functional programming.  But concluded that Scheme sounded
a bit austere on this account, and taking Seibel at his word, I would be
hoping to get, through LISP, to functional thinking within a multi-paradigm
context - which should be easier to translate into Pythonic thinking .

Almost thought I'd get away with skipping this step - with Guido talking
about stripping out much of the functional syntax from the Python core.

But then decorators come onto the scene.  And while they are not of great
practical importance to me at this stage, it is of some importance to me -
on general principle -  to feel less stupid when staring at one.  

The LISP route, is I am sure, a very, very (very, very) long way around to
solving this immediate issue. But, again, learning is funny.  And I go by
instinct, which seems to be telling me that the long way around is the best
available shortcut in this particular case.

My instincts are often wrong, BTW.  But I am convinced they beat the
average, with the average being listening to people who don't happen to be
me.

Which is why to the extent I am educated at all - past some baseline - it
has necessarily been mostly self-education. Which makes me more dependant,
not less, on resources folks are kind enough to share. But it's also true
that I have had to work myself to a point where the $60 for a book that
would help is not something I need to ruminate over all too much. It is
unfortunate that there were more brain cells firing during the considerable
time when that was not true.  Another example of youth being wasted on the
wrong age group.

Art