I recently cut over from Subversion to Bazaar. Happy to see that a new, improved version, 1.9, was released; I headed over to the download area only to find a RC1 version available. There were only two 1.9 releases available: source code or a Mac installer. Apparently the Windows installer will be available in a few days. How disappointing.
Why drum up everyone’s excitement on the 7th of November only to tell them that they need to wait around for another five days before they can use it? It is a bizarre marketing practice!
Author: grant
A Theory for Language Design
No amount of language design can force a programmer to write clear programs. If the programmer’s conception of the problem is badly organized, then his programs will also be badly organized. The extent to which a programming language can help a programmer to organize his problem is precisely the extent to which it provides features appropriate to his problem domain. The emphasis should not be on eliminating “bad” language constructs, but on discovering or inventing helpful ones.
— AIM-353: LAMBDA: The Ultimate Imperative
IronScheme does CPS
Helium for learning Haskell
Helium is a user-friendly compiler designed especially for learning the functional programming language Haskell. The quality of the error messages has been the main concern both in the choice of the language features and in the implementation of the compiler. Helium implements almost full Haskell, where the most notable difference is the absence of type classes. Our goal is to let students learn functional programming more quickly and with more fun. The compiler has been successfully employed in two introductory programming courses at Utrecht University.
(mentioned on the PLT discussion list)
Why Calculating is Better than Scheming
In 1987 Phil Wadler wrote the paper Why Calculating is Better than Scheming. It is an essay on the shortcomings of using Scheme as the programming language with which to teach beginning programmers in SICP, and how Miranda would have a better choice for teaching the software engineers of tomorrow. This was very fun for me to read, and might be for you, too, if you are interested in teaching or the history of both Haskell and Scheme.
Continue reading “Why Calculating is Better than Scheming”
A peasant revolt against DrScheme!
Here is an interesting thread in the PLT discussion archive discussing the want of beginning programmers only to learn things that are clearly useful!
(surely via the PLT Discussion list, but I can’t recall or find it…)
Carneades
Carneades is an argument mapping application, with a graphical user interface, and a software library for building applications supporting various argumentation tasks.
The interesting thing about this is that it is written in both JavaFX and R6RS Scheme!
(via comp.lang.scheme)
An Improved Approach to the Sieve of Eratosthenes
For an explanation and easy improvemnts see Colin Runciman’s functional pearl “The primes using The Sieve of Eratosthenes”.
Found here in PDF or PS.
(via the PLT Discussion List)
International Lisp Conference 2009
The International Lisp Conference 2009 will be taking place at M.I.T., in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from March 22 to March 25, 2009.
Addendum: 2/4/9
All of the details are now out on the site.
Haskell Super Mario Bros
Here is a post on a reimplementation of Super Mario Bros written in Haskell.
(via The Little Calculist)