libera/#lisp - IRC Chatlog

2:02:14 mdhughes Scheme is a lot easier to learn, and has SICP as a fantastic textbook for CS.

2:05:07 mdhughes For the assoc situation, I wrote a tiny function alref that checks pair? and true, and returns cdr if safe. It takes a minute to put it in your own common library.

2:06:04 mdhughes Scheme largely assumes you want to build tools yourself, BUT it has a lot of libraries if you don't.

2:06:16 aeth The hard part to learn is LET/LET*-based bindings with the explicit scope which, yes, Scheme doesn't force you to do, but in practice, I think most Scheme winds up doing that instead of using internal DEFINEs for variables, anyway

2:06:55 aeth The other hard part is when there's an implicit-PROGN/BEGIN, which is also mostly the same (e.g. IF vs COND vs WHEN vs UNLESS, etc.)

2:07:22 mdhughes Yeah, I use a lot of let* or letrec*, chains of definitions, then one bit of logic or a return at the bottom.

2:08:15 mdhughes So it looks more like a mathematician's blackboard, derive derive derive ... X

2:09:00 aeth LET* also makes it convenient to have variables that look mutable that aren't

2:09:17 aeth (let* ((x 42) (x (foo x))) ...)

2:09:23 mdhughes Right, just redefine a term as you refine it.

2:09:28 aeth which when there's like 12 of those it makes more sense than my toy example

2:09:55 aeth and if a LET that isn't top level gets too big, it's a clear refactor point

2:10:07 aeth just all in all worth using

4:44:44 trickard_ ** NICK trickard