From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2007-07-24T12:37:18+09:00
Subject: Re: Taking the bull by its horns

Kaldrenon wrote:

> I started on Perl because at the time it was the most un-Java language
> I knew about, and I know it's considered beneficial to learn languages
> that are very different from each other. I have since gained a lot of
> exposure to just how many language choices there are  (and better ones
> than Perl, at that), but I still would like to learn a little more
> about Perl from a pure academic interest/curiosity standpoint.
I wasn't aware there was anything "academic" in Perl -- it's just an
immensely practical and pragmatic way of getting stuff done on
computers. I don't know if there's anything inside a Perl implementation
(at least not until Parrot) that would be as Earth-shaking as, say, call
with concurrent continuation, tail recursion, or even what's in the Java
Virtual Machine.

> And perhaps when I said I want to learn Lisp I should have said "a
> Lisp", since I know there are many. Common Lisp and Scheme are the two
> I've heard the most about, so it will probably be one of those, but I
> haven't decided yet. By "better tutorial language" are you saying that
> Scheme is probably easier to learn? What makes it a good tutorial?

Well, for openers, "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs"
is based on Scheme. For another, Scheme cleaned up some weaknesses in
Lisp 1.5 that only with much wrangling got cleaned up in Common Lisp.
It's less bloated. The performance of a decent Scheme compiler is
probably about on a par with that of a decent Common Lisp compiler, and
the Common Lisp libraries and applications are much broader. But I don't
know of anything out there in the Common Lisp world like Dr. Scheme.