Author: grant

Why Emacs?

Emacs is a text editor built on top of a Lisp (Elisp) interpreter. The full API of the both text editor and the Lisp interpreter itself is available to the user.
For this reason, along with the fact that there are hundreds and hundreds of useful additions available to Emacs, I am learning it.
There isn’t anything more to it than that!

How to print a PLT Slideshow to a file

Here is how to print a PLT Slideshow to a file:
slideshow -P -c -o [output file] [input file]

  • -P: print to postscript
  • -c: (condense) flatten the output file in the case that you had built slides incrementally

Addendum: 05/17/08
The ‘ps’ argument doesn’t seem to work. I must have used the alternate ‘P’ originally for printing, but posted the other option, ‘ps’. As such, I’ve updated this post. I will look into this. Additionally I’ve changed the condense argument to ‘c’.

2008 Workshop on Scheme and Functional Programming

The goal of the 2008 Workshop on Scheme and Functional Programming is to:

report experience with the programming languages known as Scheme, to discuss ideas for the future of Scheme, and to present research related to Scheme and functional programming.

It is co-located with ICFP 08 in Victoria, British Columbia.

Scheme is mysophobic

Here is an interesting post about hygiene and its sociological impact on the two Lisp groups of Schemers and Common Lispers.
While the post itself is a troll, the author:

  1. Uses a very accessible analogy.
  2. Quite clearly communicates a number of differences between Scheme and Common Lisp when it comes not only to hygiene but also language design.

The interesting thing about this post is that the only difference between this post being a troll and an educational article is how the content was delivered. If you remove the cruddy name-calling, whining, and complaining; it would have been a really good post on the difference between the languages. That is wild!
(reference mysophobic)

Scheme Versus Common Lisp: Why?

Anyone new to Lisp will quickly find that among certain folks there is very much an “us versus them” mentality when it comes to Scheme and Common Lisp.
Is it just human nature that drives the mentality? Is it boredom?
Since Scheme and Common Lisp are both Lisp dialects, in some ways they are very similar; but in other ways they are quite different. The thing is that every language decision is a trade off from which we can learn. Most students of programming would look to both the similarities and differences in each language and recognize their function and beauty!
One thing that I can guarantee that you will notice pretty quickly once you start hanging around Lispers (in general) is that there is a noticeable difference in attitude and demeanor among folks that have studied and appreciate both Common Lisp and Scheme, and the folks that have not.
The folks that have studied and appreciate both languages are simply a much more pleasant group of people to be around. Perhaps that is how the expression about “the haves and the have nots” came to be?

Chicago Intro to Lisp Workshop

The first event held by the Chicago Lisp User Group will be an Intro to Lisp Workshop. It is

is a half-day workshop to introduce Lisp and its goodness to other programmers. The primary audience is the Chicago Linux User Group but it open to everyone. This is the initial announcement and tentative schedule.

Looks fun, even more-so if you present at it!

Writing a Brainf*** compiler and interpreter

Brainf*** is a Turing complete programming language, known for its esoteric “minimalist nature”, that has gained quite a bit of popularity over the years.
While you most certainly wouldn’t want to write much code in this language, it might be fun to write a compiler for this language, and even an interpreter to test our your compiler!