Link – Page 82 – Wisdom And Wonder

JavaScript for PLT Scheme

This package is an implementation of the ECMAScript language specified by ECMA-262 Edition 3, better known as JavaScript.

Here is a link straight to the documentation.

Please don't assume Lisp is

Please don’t assume Lisp is only useful for Animation and Graphics, AI, Bioinformatics, B2B and E-Commerce, Data Mining, EDA/Semiconductor applications, Expert Systems, Finance, Intelligent Agents, Knowledge Management, Mechanical CAD, Modeling and Simulation, Natural Language, Optimization, Research, Risk Analysis, Scheduling, Telecom, and Web Authoring just because these are the only things they happened to list.

— Kent Pitman

THE way to draw graphs in LaTeX

Per Rafael, tkz-berge.sty is the way to draw graphs in LaTeX.

PGF and TikZ

PGF is a TeX macro package for generating graphics. It is platform- and format-independent and works together with the most important TeX backend drivers, including pdftex and dvips. It comes with a user-friedly syntax layer called TikZ.

(via this post on the PLT list)

A DrScheme REPL Improvement

DrScheme’s REPL has always had sort of an annoying behavior where the HOME key (or arrows) do’t respect the REPL prompt (which is the ‘>’). This is now fixed; and in SVN.

Programming Language People

Sometimes it is helpful to know that programming language creators are people (celebrities?) just like anyone else.
Here are some pictures of programming language people.

The Soundex Algorithm

Soundex is a phonetic algorithm for indexing names by sound, as pronounced in English. The goal is for names with the same pronunciation to be encoded to the same representation so that they can be matched despite minor differences in spelling[1]. Soundex is the most widely known of all phonetic algorithms and is often used (incorrectly) as a synonym for “phonetic algorithm”. Improvements to Soundex are the basis for many modern phonetic algorithms

— Wikipedia Entry
(via Vijay Matthew)

Computers are a metamedium

The computer is a medium that can dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that cannot exist physically. It is not a tool, although it can act like many tools. The computer is the first metamedium, and as such it has degrees of freedom for representation and expression never before encountered and as yet barely investigated. The protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or like a language to be shaped and exploited.

— Alan Kay
I’ve never before heard it put quite so well.
(via R.P. James)

Notes on Introduction To Algorithms

Peteris Krumins has been posting his notes on MIT’s Introduction to Algorithms. The notes are valuable for anyone interested in working their way through the CLRS text and MIT Open Courseware videos.

(via LtU)

Riastradh’s Lisp Style Rules are a wholly holistic and unscientific take on Lisp style rules. They have helped me not only to get a better sense of how Lisp people do things, but also why. There is other stuff like this around the Internet, but this is the only I’ve found that I enjoyed reading.
While there are a lot of good rules in the guide, not all of them were new to me, so I only took notes on the ones that I found interesting for one reason or another.
Continue reading “Lisp Style Rules”