Computer Science Canada Some questions about Scheme |
| Author: | Banished_Outlaw [ Sun Jun 22, 2008 11:36 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Some questions about Scheme |
First of all, waterloo does teach Scheme during first year in Software Engineering right? Second of all, is scheme a free language like Java or do you have to pay for it? If it is free where can i donwload it? and does it require a compiler or anything of the sorts? Furthermore, is scheme better than python or are they similar in any way because the name python pops up a lot when one is talking about the Scheme language. All answers will be very helpful. Thanks  |
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| Author: | btiffin [ Mon Jun 23, 2008 12:31 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Some questions about Scheme |
To learn Scheme, I'm a big fan of DrScheme. It has an IDE that you can set an expertise level for. I don't normally suggest IDE's, but in this case, the PLT team has done a wonderful job. http://www.drscheme.org/ Regarding first year Waterloo; sorry, clueless. I haven't been there since 1983. Fortran, COBOL and Pascal ruled the day for frosh back then. Scheme is free (some versions DFSG free, and some, free beer free), but there are commercial implementations as well. For Debian GNU/Linux, there are like 8 packaged versions to pick from. Guile being one that may not show up in a 'scheme' package title search. Better than Python? Different. Python has a much lessened LISPy, more OO feel to it for sure. Python could also be termed "batteries included" relative to Scheme. If you become a fan of Python, you can even try pyscheme. I'm a rebol. The only better development environment I stand behind is REBOL. Completely personal opinion and everyone else is just wrong.
Cheers |
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| Author: | Tony [ Mon Jun 23, 2008 12:31 am ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
I don't remember about SE. UW Math is introducing Scheme. I'm tempted to say "no" for Software Engineering, but Prof. Ragde would know better. Just about all of the common programming languages are "free", as in they have open standards. As a result, just about all of them would have a free compiler/interpreter available. Try DrScheme. (Turing used to be an exception, but if Holtsoft was not to release the compiler, OpenT project would have made one available instead.) Scheme and Python are, in fact, very different. Actually Scheme, being a functional language, will likely be very different from anything you've done before. It might take some getting used to, but it will make you a better programmer. |
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| Author: | wtd [ Mon Jun 23, 2008 12:47 am ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
Indeed. Grab DrScheme and just write some code. Doesn't have to be anything fancy, just dabble for now. |
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| Author: | Zeroth [ Mon Jun 23, 2008 9:20 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Some questions about Scheme |
Like the others said. Scheme is incredibly different. Probably the hardest programming challenge of your learning years would be to build a fully-functional scheme interpreter... in scheme. Trust me, its phenomenally difficult, but immensely fun. When I did it, my brain just clicked four hours in on day three(20th hour spent coding on it), and it suddenly made sense. It all made sense. Its a great feeling.
And no, as the self-proclaimed Python guru, Python is not like scheme. Its "genetic" heritage is more, modula 3+smalltalk. With a bit of lisp from a major offshoot in the family.(In v1.6 a LISP coder added stuff like map, lambda, filter, list comprehensions for a more lispy feel) Unfortunately, in v3.0 they are removing map, lambda, filter from the built-ins. 
Heck, Google built a series of functional tools in Python: http://goog-goopy.sourceforge.net/ |
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| Author: | Cinjection [ Wed Jun 25, 2008 12:21 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Some questions about Scheme |
I'm going to Waterloo for Computer Science in September, so I picked up Scheme this summer. I'm finding it really hard to make the transition, as this is my first functional language. After like four years working with imperative languages, moving to functional languages is a challenge. Does anyone have any good online tutorials to send my way? I'm using this for now, but it's really esoteric. Don't get me wrong, it's a great resource, but I'd like to see what else is out there. |
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| Author: | btiffin [ Wed Jun 25, 2008 1:46 pm ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
Get DrScheme and check http://www.plt-scheme.org/software/drscheme/learning.html Cheers |
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| Author: | wtd [ Wed Jun 25, 2008 11:13 pm ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
Feel free to post any specific questions you may have in the Functional Programming forum. |
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| Author: | Reality Check [ Thu Jun 26, 2008 10:27 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Some questions about Scheme |
Yea I'm going to Waterloo for CS and we're using Scheme. By the sounds of it, it'd be a wise decision for me to go out and at least get used to functional programming. I remember at a sample lecture at UW, one of the profs gave us an example of some scheme code (I think his name was Ian...not Vandenburg the other Ian) and honestly it didn't look too different. But then again I know absolutely nothing about Scheme or functional programming so I'm probably wrong. |
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| Author: | wtd [ Thu Jun 26, 2008 11:01 am ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
Make peace with the idea of not having for and while loops at your disposal, and forget about mutating variables. |
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| Author: | Prabhakar Ragde [ Thu Jun 26, 2008 11:25 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Some questions about Scheme |
I don't know why you guys insist on learning on your own (possibly poorly or incorrectly, without any help) what you're going to learn in a couple of months in a classroom. You'll just get bored, start skipping lectures, miss important material, and get lower marks. But, if you insist, use DrScheme, and use the "How To Design Programs" textbook available at http://www.htdp.org, because we use both at UW. Ignore the stuff about draw.ss, it's obsolete. Learn about image.ss and world.ss instead. SE students will get a bit of Scheme in second term, but most of their first year is taught in C and C++. Zeroth: a full Scheme interpreter -- including continuations and macros? Or are you talking about a core subset? --PR |
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| Author: | Reality Check [ Thu Jun 26, 2008 12:06 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Some questions about Scheme |
Prabhakar Ragde @ Thu Jun 26, 2008 11:25 am wrote: I don't know why you guys insist on learning on your own (possibly poorly or incorrectly, without any help) what you're going to learn in a couple of months in a classroom. You'll just get bored, start skipping lectures, miss important material, and get lower marks.
I don't agree with this at all. Learning it on your own can greatly help you in the classroom. If you're responsible enough not to skip (which you should be) then staying ahead of class or at least on par is much easier if you have some background in the material. |
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| Author: | Aziz [ Thu Jun 26, 2008 12:57 pm ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
I learned Java by myself, and skipped most of my classes. What did that get me - a very high A (they don't give % on transcripts). As long as you keep up with what the class is doing, you're fine. But certainly if you have trouble and don't go to class, don't complain to anyone (I here it all the time). It's actually quite the opposite, PR. If you stick to what they teach you in school and don't do anything else on your own time or out of your own initiative, you're not going to get far. That's why most of my college class fails in our courses (which are really easy). They don't bother to try to learn this stuff, they just try to do what they're told. It's not the way to go about learning computer science. You have to experiment, and only doing what you're taught doesn't help. |
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| Author: | Prabhakar Ragde [ Thu Jun 26, 2008 2:19 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Some questions about Scheme |
I never said anything about sticking to school and not doing anything else on your own time. The first-term CS courses at UW spend a lot of time trying to get students to go beyond what is required, which not enough students do. I was talking, rather, of a specific CS impulse, which is to "get ahead" in an upcoming course. Do you do this in other courses? When you're about to take a shop class, do you look at an Internet tutorial and try to drill some holes in metal? In the summer before English class, do you read the assigned Shakespeare play? (That last one might actually be a good idea, but I bet no one does it. But "getting ahead" on an ESL class by using the Internet could be disastrous.) So, DIY, absolutely, but from the base of knowledge of the course itself. What I don't need is someone who skips my lectures because they've read the first chapter of SICP (which, by the way, I do not recommend as an introduction to programming in Scheme -- it's a great book, but it has its place, which is a bit later on) and the night before each assignment is due writes out some sloppy R5RS code with no comments. Or, when using C, calls a library function instead of writing the code I want, thinking that the point is to get a working program instead of getting exercise in a particular technique. (I had students do this last winter.) --PR |
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| Author: | Reality Check [ Thu Jun 26, 2008 2:31 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Some questions about Scheme |
Well, it's not so much "Getting ahead" but more so just ensuring that I do well in a field that I like. Unlike many other fields, CS is something that really must go beyond the classroom and I personally would not want to walk into my first few lectures not understanding anything. That'd mean I'd have to try and catch up which could screw me over. |
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| Author: | Aziz [ Thu Jun 26, 2008 2:36 pm ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
Well of course, don't forgoe classes because you think you know it. I usually do go to most of my classes, just to find out what I already know. But I have learned a few things that I wouldn't have, like model-view in java. It was basic, but it got me on to it. I wouldn't rule out trying anything ahead at all. It can only help, as long as you keep an open mind. I would be knee deep in horrible coding practices had I only listened to my teachers. The bleeding-edge development community is online, and places like compsci.ca are great places to get good information. But either way, if you're closed minded, it's a bad idea. I'll still stand by my opinion that trying things ahead gives you a good clue as to what's going on. In my 3 highschool computer classes we went over the same assignments. Every year I learned more because I knew more. |
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| Author: | Prabhakar Ragde [ Thu Jun 26, 2008 2:45 pm ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
The other flaw in this line of reasoning is thinking that the content of the course is the programming language. That may be true in high school (even though, with a good teacher, it is not) but it is not true in the classes we're talking about. The amount of Scheme we use fits on a page (two pages if you want a formal grammar and full semantics). It's a tiny subset of Scheme plus some nonstandard constructs. It's what we do with them that's important -- and you're not going to find that in some Internet tutorial. --PR |
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| Author: | Aziz [ Thu Jun 26, 2008 2:47 pm ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
What to you do with them that you can't find in an internet tutorial, or a good book, or an online community? |
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| Author: | Prabhakar Ragde [ Thu Jun 26, 2008 2:54 pm ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
Is it so surprising to you that, just as an Internet tutorial or a good book may synthesize information in a way not found elsewhere, a course can also do the same thing, only in not quite as casually accessible a form? --PR |
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| Author: | Aziz [ Thu Jun 26, 2008 3:02 pm ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
I never said it wasn't  but that doesn't mean you should avoid learning the language (or anything at all, actually) before the class, or at least dipping into it. |
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| Author: | Prabhakar Ragde [ Thu Jun 26, 2008 3:09 pm ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
Okay, well. IF you're disciplined enough to stay in class, keep paying attention, and not start playing videogames on your laptop, and IF you're open-minded enough to do things the way we ask you to and not some way you picked up from some dubious Internet source, and IF when you've seen the answer to some exercise we suggest, you substitute another exercise of comparable complexity for the learning benefit, then you can go ahead and "learn the language". I still think you're undercutting an education that you're paying a fair amount for, but it's your business. --PR |
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| Author: | Aziz [ Thu Jun 26, 2008 3:32 pm ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
Well of course IF. The person still has to be responsible. You have to make your own choices. For example, when my Java teacher told us to declare arrays as so "String [] names", I knew that String isn't the data type, String[] is, and that's most definetely not the convention, and is deceiving. I of course no what is meant, but if one of my class mates saw "String[] names" what are they going to think? The point is, learning something ahead of class isn't going to hurt your education. If it's your choice to not use that knowledge in conjunction with other things you learn, including in school, then you're the one giving yourself trouble. It's like that in anything. You have to be prepared to constantly learn and adapt, and to be open to new things, or at least know of them and the reasons for it. I stand by my new-line-before-braces convention not because it's how I learned, or because it's the only thing I know, and not only because I'm more used to it, but rather because I have reasons as to why it's a better programming practice. Anyways, the point is (I know, second time I said it), knowledge can't hurt you (at least more than ignorance can). |
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| Author: | Reality Check [ Wed Aug 20, 2008 9:00 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Some questions about Scheme |
Well, I've been playing around with Scheme for the last month and I feel far more confident with that practice going into UW then if I had done nothing. It was different then any other languages I'd done and while I probably could have learned it at UW, I probably wouldn't have done as well... |
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| Author: | Aziz [ Wed Aug 20, 2008 9:05 am ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
Of course. Just make sure you don't skip classes because you "think" you already know it. You got a chance to explore on your own and get used to the quirks and features of Scheme and what it can do. Now the school has a certain lesson and structure for you to follow, which serves its own purpose. |
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| Author: | Reality Check [ Wed Aug 20, 2008 6:02 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Some questions about Scheme |
Oh of course. I'm not one to skip classes and the only time I did so in High School was when we had a supply or I knew for a fact we wouldn't be doing anything. |
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| Author: | wtd [ Wed Aug 20, 2008 6:57 pm ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
So, Reality Check... what have you learned about Scheme in your dabbling? |
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| Author: | Reality Check [ Thu Aug 21, 2008 1:17 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Some questions about Scheme |
I won't lie, the beginning was very frustrating. I found myself wondering: "WHY?" Why do this and why do that but after I got past the problems, I found it to be a very useful learning tool. It was a completely different way of programming and forced me to learn and perfect many of the concepts in Programming like recursion. Before, I wasn't great at recursion, I really never used it unless I really had to but Scheme has allowed me to truly understand and utilize them. If I now go back to Java I'd feel FAR more confident in working with Recursion. However, I still don't see myself programming in a functional language when doing a larger project. At this point in time I see it as a very strong learning tool (maybe this should be taught in high schools?) but maybe I'm not far enough into the learning yet to understand better use (only been doing it about a month) More specifically I've done basic Scheme such as defining variables using define and let. For looping structures I've been playing with tail excursion. Taught myself primitives and procedures and even trying redefining a primitive (which was pretty damn cool). The stuff I've been doing is very basic and I'm just trying to familiarate myself with the language, hoping to understand it better in a few months |
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| Author: | wtd [ Thu Aug 21, 2008 12:21 pm ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
Have you played with lambda functions? |
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| Author: | Cinjection [ Thu Aug 21, 2008 1:20 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Some questions about Scheme |
Well my pre-Waterloo Scheme learning has concluded for the summer when I made this: Genetic Algorithm for n-queens problem.(comments/critiques appreciated) I'm excited to learn the language formally when I get to CS135 in a week or two. Until then, I'm going back to playing with beautiful Ruby. |
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| Author: | Reality Check [ Thu Aug 21, 2008 9:40 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Some questions about Scheme |
Pretty basic lambda functions such as using it to define: (define foo (lambda (a b) (+ a b))) and I learned to use it for recursion as well for example factorial: (define factorial (lambda (n) (if (not (positive? n)) 1 (* n (factorial (- n 1)))))) Alot of things I learned on the good ol' internet but really I just got examples of things such as very basic recursion and applied to idea to more complex problems. Using other programs is sometimes the best way to learn |
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| Author: | Reality Check [ Thu Aug 21, 2008 9:45 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Some questions about Scheme |
Oh yeah I also learned the differences of lazy, strict, and non-scrict evaluation of functions but I personally prefer strict. I don't really understand why non-strict would ever be useful since you're evaluation a function potentially many more times then needed. But yea, very broken and basic learning since it's the first time I've ever touched this kind of programming (I'd only ever done Turing and Java before). I'd say I can get to teaching myself MUCH better once I get through the first month of school and they lay a good groundwork for me. Once I have that groundwork, I can build everything up myself through the greatness of the internet and books. |
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| Author: | wtd [ Thu Aug 21, 2008 10:51 pm ] |
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme |
Laziness is immensely beneficial, but can be difficult to understand. Notably laziness makes a program easier to parallelize. |
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| Author: | wtd [ Thu Aug 21, 2008 11:03 pm ] | ||
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme | ||
Write a function such that I can call it as follows. Tail calls are essential.
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| Author: | Reality Check [ Thu Aug 21, 2008 11:53 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Some questions about Scheme |
Laziness is immensely beneficial FINALLY, somebody talks some sense in this world  |
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| Author: | wtd [ Fri Aug 22, 2008 12:20 am ] | ||
| Post subject: | RE:Some questions about Scheme | ||
Oh, and for fun and to amuse me... finding the maximum odd number in a list in Common Lisp:
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| Author: | Reality Check [ Fri Aug 22, 2008 11:31 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Some questions about Scheme |
By the way this is the site I did most of my learning in for anyone that cares: http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/languages/scheme/tutorial-dsitaram/t-y-scheme-Z-H-2.html Pretty basic and useful stuff, just to get a hold of how the syntax and comparisons work. |
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