[Tutor] Ooer, OT Lisp
Alan Gauld
alan.gauld at freenet.co.uk
Fri Jan 21 23:33:23 CET 2005
> 1) Anyone here familiar with both?
Yes at least two of us - DAnny has used Lisp/Scheme.
> 2) If so, which would you rate as more powerful?
Lisp by a long long way. Its more mature and has every
bell and whistle going. Of course its much much harder
to become an expert in Lisp for the same reason.
> 3) What's with all those parentheses?
Read my page on Functional Programming.
Basically every Lisp program statement is an expression,
and like most complex expressions you need parens...
Basically a Lisp program is just a whole heap of nested
expressions!
It doesn't really need them of course but its one of the
things that makes Lisp very regular in a math sense,
very pure in approach, and why the academics say its
the only "beautiful" language.
> 4) Perhaps the powerful question's a bit vague, how about ease of
> use? I like that the simplest Lisp expression is - , but those
> brackets....
Its very easy to use once you learn it. But its initially
different to traditional programming languages (although
since it was invented in the early 60s - late 50's
even??? - it is ttraditional in itself!)
> 5) Are you able to point me towards a simplified explanation of how
> the 'syntaxless' language can write programmes?
Try the How To Design Programs (htdp.org) and
Structure & Interpretation of Computer Programs (sicp.org)
web sites. Both are excellent books published by MIT for
free on the web. Both use Scheme which is a close relative
of Common Lisp.
I strongly recommend you check them out your programming
in general will improve a lot from reading either book.
The first is easier for non maths folks, SICP is a
software engineering classic textbook.
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web tutor
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld
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