Re: What's so cool about Scheme?

[Matt Hellige <address@hidden>]

[Guy Steele - Sun Microsystems Labs <Guy.Steele@Sun.COM>]
> 
> It may have to do with the fact that many of the
> "simple" functions on lists that are used as early
> teaching examples are in fact purely functional:
> 
> (define (append x y)
>   (if (null? x) y (cons (car x) (append (cdr x) y))))
>   
> (define (member? x y)
>   (and (not (null? y))
>        (or (equal? x (car y))
>            (member? x (cdr y)))))
> 
> (define map (f x)
>   (if (null? x) x (cons (f (car x)) (map f (cdr x)))))
>   
> and so on.  And by such examples one may be led into the
> functional style of programming, which is *possible*
> within Lisp/Scheme, though not *required*.
> 

Yes, that makes sense... I probably would've seen these examples in
Scheme first, as well, had I not considered myself "above" taking the
CS intro class in college (taught in Scheme). As it happened, I first
saw them in SML, and I rather with I had taken the intro class. But
that's life!

In any case, it's an unfortunate association, as calling Lisp
functional is unfair to both Lisp and functional programming!

Matt

-- 
Matt Hellige                  matt@immute.net
http://matt.immute.net