[Tutor] Ooer, OT Lisp

[John Purser]

Very interesting sites.  Thank you.

John Purser 

-----Original Message-----
From: tutor-bounces at python.org [mailto:tutor-bounces at python.org] On Behalf
Of Alan Gauld
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 14:33
To: Liam Clarke; Tutor Tutor
Subject: Re: [Tutor] Ooer, OT Lisp

> 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

_______________________________________________
Tutor maillist  -  Tutor at python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor