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| Author |
how can I build a kick butt website using scheme?
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| gavino 2006-11-04, 4:01 am |
| help!
| |
|
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| Bruce Lewis 2006-11-04, 10:11 pm |
| "Griff" <grettke@gmail.com> writes:
> http://brl.sourceforge.net/brl_1.html#SEC2
Out of date. For the "constantly-changing variety of tools designed to
keep Java code out of web pages" I mention WebMacro, Velocity and Tea.
Today I don't know how many people have heard of those. I guess it
would be Cocoon, Spring and something else built on JSTL (what?). A few
years from now I'm sure it will need updating again.
--
http://ourdoings.com/ Easily organize and disseminate news and
photos for your family or group.
| |
| Ray Dillinger 2006-11-06, 7:00 pm |
| gavino wrote:
> help!
>
First, learn to program in Scheme.
Bear
| |
| gavino 2006-12-02, 4:08 am |
| Hi Mr Lewis, if I have not used MIT email should I be able to learn BRL
from the tutorial, even if I do not know programming?
Or do I need to know programming first?
| |
| gavino 2006-12-02, 4:08 am |
| what do you reccomend to do that?
| |
| gavino 2006-12-02, 4:08 am |
|
I feel that I am close to using some really  stuff liek plt scheme
webserver or brl, but my java buddy says screw it and do java to make
$$. I would prefer to learn something even more powerful and start my
own company and use it to make awesoem apps.
That to me would be fun!
| |
| Ray Dillinger 2006-12-02, 4:08 am |
| gavino wrote:
> what do you reccomend to do that?
>
Practice.
Bear
| |
| Bruce Lewis 2006-12-11, 7:18 pm |
| "gavino" <bootiack@yahoo.com> writes:
> Hi Mr Lewis, if I have not used MIT email should I be able to learn BRL
> from the tutorial, even if I do not know programming?
> Or do I need to know programming first?
You should know programming first. Go through "How To Design Programs"
using drscheme.
| |
| gavino 2006-12-11, 7:18 pm |
| ok I will pick up where I left off at ch4, ch4 is kinda mind numbing!
| |
| Mallor 2006-12-11, 7:18 pm |
|
gavino wrote:
> ok I will pick up where I left off at ch4, ch4 is kinda mind numbing!
Gavino, programming is mind numbing. Part of the skill of being a real
world programmer, is trudging through all the mind numbing stuff. It's
all a big swamp. That's what programming is. Some programming
languages, books, and tutorials are easier to swallow than others, but
you're always going to run into some rough spot where you just don't
know what's going on. You simply have to persist and keep going.
Which is very hard, especially in the absence of funding, external
motivation, clear goals, or any kind of reward. People who can't do
it, don't stay in the industry.
Your goal at this point should be: "to learn to program." If your goal
is really "to make some web pages," then you should be working with an
application such as http://www.nvu.org , not bothering with
programming. But let's assume for sake of argument that you're trying
to be a programmer, not a web designer.
It took me 1 year of studying on my own to learn C++. I already knew
C, Pascal, Atari 800 BASIC, 6502 assembly language, and MC68000
assembly language. I had about 2 years of formal college courses under
my belt as well. After college, I bought 2 books on C++, and I sat
around for a year programming to learn it. C++ is a picky, difficult
language, so it's possible to learn a language in less time. But my
point is, IT TAKES TIME.
The best advice I can give you, when trying to learn techno-anything,
is when you get to that paragraph where your eyes are glazing over...
SKIP IT, JUST KEEP READING. It may become clear 10 pages down the way.
Techies are not great writers, and tech is complicated anyways. It's
often better to just skip the crappy explanation and keep on chugging.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
| |
| gavino 2006-12-11, 7:18 pm |
| who in XXXX is brandon?
| |
| Ray Dillinger 2006-12-11, 7:18 pm |
| gavino wrote:
> who in XXXX is brandon?
>
*sigh.* Brandon managed to piss off some religious twits
and now periodically one of them posts this crap to every
group he's ever posted on.
It's best to ignore the spam monkeys.
Bear
| |
| Mallor 2006-12-11, 7:18 pm |
|
gavino wrote:
> who in XXXX is brandon?
That's what I want to know! I cannot imagine, for the relatively small
amount of time I spend participating in this forum, and with my career
quite demonstrably in the toilet at the moment, how I could be deemed
important, powerful, or relevant enough to warrant this ongoing
attention. I am forced to conclude that it's not about me, but the
person posting it. Hope he either grows up or gets help. For my part,
I just need to accept the world as it is and let go of what I cannot
change.
Anyways Gavino, I hope I've given you some useful advice on slogging
through various learning curves. I've certainly been there for the
past 14 years, and I'm still at it. A lot of people will not tell you
how they've failed at things, what their difficulties actually were. I
feel this does no service to the next generation of programmers,
stumbling along through exactly the same problems and making exactly
the same mistakes all over again. So I'm pretty forthright about what
I have and haven't gotten done - which as you can see, bears a penalty.
I hope that I may possibly spare someone else the trouble.
Also, it is important to see examples of people who have not been
defeated by trouble. I need to see it every once in awhile myself,
just so I can keep going.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
| |
| Merrilee Larson 2006-12-11, 7:18 pm |
| On 2006-12-09, Mallor <SeaFuncSpam@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Anyways Gavino, I hope I've given you some useful advice on slogging
> through various learning curves. I've certainly been there for the
> past 14 years, and I'm still at it. A lot of people will not tell you
I empathise -- I'm going through the same "change of life". I'm in the process
of educating myself in order to build a 2nd career. Funny thing is, back in my
days a McGill U. ('60s & '70s), I choked on Pl1 and RPG. I *swore* I would
never be involved with any of that crap. The IT industry changed, and so did I
and now I *know* this is the industry that I want to participate in.
So I'm searching for a language to work in as well. I can write PHP, some Perl
and am not fluent in either. I prefer Perl to PHP. I'm currently seriously
looking at Tcl, and am lurking and avidly listening to this NewsGroup, as well
as the Lisp one.
I can't for the life of me understand the following:
In my lurkings of this and the Lisp Newsgroup, I've come to the conclusion that
Lisp/Scheme hackers are to computer languages as PHDs are to Academia/Industry.
The other languages certainly have their *gurus*, but you guys are so far above
the bunch of them. That being my opinion (and I'm *never* wrong ;) ), why is
Scheme/Lisp not on top of the language race? You guys have it in you to create
something that would shake the IT community to the core. You can create the
demand for Lisp/Scheme know-how! You guys need to create *something* to force
the IT community and others to beat a path to your doors for your skills. So
what's the problem? Or is Lisp/Scheme simply not the right tool for *any*
application other than AI projects? I'm just curious!
I'm interested in your replies because Mallor got me thinking about which
language I should be learning. Should I go after a language that's currently in
demand in Industry - i.e. be able to earn a living more easily - or should I
learn a less popular language, but one that suits *me* and that I can grok
easily? So at the moment, I having a few doubts about my even looking at Tcl,
or Lisp, or Scheme, if I can't even put a bean on the table with these skills.
What do you guys think?
--
duke | A: Yes. |
| >Q: Are you sure? |
| >>A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. |
| >>>Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? |
| |
| Shiro Kawai 2006-12-11, 7:18 pm |
| Merrilee Larson wrote:
> I'm interested in your replies because Mallor got me thinking about which
> language I should be learning. Should I go after a language that's currently in
> demand in Industry - i.e. be able to earn a living more easily - or should I
> learn a less popular language, but one that suits *me* and that I can grok
> easily? So at the moment, I having a few doubts about my even looking at Tcl,
> or Lisp, or Scheme, if I can't even put a bean on the table with these skills.
> What do you guys think?
I don't understand why you should ask. You can learn both.
I mean, the industry-demanded ones and more esoteric ones.
If you think you don't have time or energy or whatever to learn
as many languages, you're in trouble. There are people who
learn and use new languages out of their curiosity or just
for fun, and make stuff with them. Even without thinking
what it has to do with their resume. And you're competing
with such people in the job market.
I've worked with quite a few good Lisp/Scheme programmers.
One thing they have in common was that they are also good at
C/C++/whatever "mainstream" languages (whether they want to
program in them is a different question). Also they have no
problem in learning whatever new languages they come across.
Some time ago we hired an intermediate-level programmer for
a game project, which is done mostly in C++. We came to know
him because he wrote some stuff in Scheme and put it on
his webpage. Of course he knows C++ fairly well; it's kind of
thing taken for granted. What we were interested in was that
he set an interesting problem and chose a good tool to solve it.
After all, languages are just tools to solve problems and build
things. For each given problem, a professional programmer
chooses the best tool to tackle it. A company hires people
because they can solve problems, not just because they know
certain programming language. So, what you should go after
is to learn how to solve (practical) problems. That includes
finding a right programming language to do so.
| |
| Mallor 2006-12-13, 4:24 pm |
|
Merrilee Larson wrote:
>
> So I'm searching for a language to work in as well. I can write PHP, some Perl
> and am not fluent in either. I prefer Perl to PHP. I'm currently seriously
> looking at Tcl, and am lurking and avidly listening to this NewsGroup, as well
> as the Lisp one.
There's a market for Tcl? I thought it was pretty much dead,
supplanted by Perl, Python, and Ruby. I'm not aware of Tcl having any
tremendous advantages over Python or Ruby. If I were in your shoes,
I'd pick one of those.
>
> I can't for the life of me understand the following:
>
> In my lurkings of this and the Lisp Newsgroup, I've come to the conclusion that
> Lisp/Scheme hackers are to computer languages as PHDs are to Academia/Industry.
> The other languages certainly have their *gurus*, but you guys are so far above
> the bunch of them. That being my opinion (and I'm *never* wrong ;) ), why is
> Scheme/Lisp not on top of the language race?
Language gurus are not business gurus.
> You guys have it in you to create
> something that would shake the IT community to the core. You can create the
> demand for Lisp/Scheme know-how! You guys need to create *something* to force
> the IT community and others to beat a path to your doors for your skills. So
> what's the problem?
I also suspect that those who are "career successful" already with Lisp
/ Scheme, really don't care about making anyone else career successful.
This isn't just a selfish decision; the reality is, promulgating a
language is a lot of work. If you're already getting paid well to do
what you like, why do you care? In fact, you may not want the
competition.
The real problem is how can Lisp make poor people actually get money.
In some kind of incremental manner that causes the base of Lisp to
grow. Open source can produce big things, but the energy has to be
focused somehow. Linux was focused, but Linux also met a market need.
Perl / PHP / Python / Ruby have all grown on web / sy min stuff.
> Or is Lisp/Scheme simply not the right tool for *any*
> application other than AI projects? I'm just curious!
I don't see Lisp / Scheme as "AI things" anymore, but then, I've been
hanging out here for awhile.
> I'm interested in your replies because Mallor got me thinking about which
> language I should be learning. Should I go after a language that's currently in
> demand in Industry - i.e. be able to earn a living more easily - or should I
> learn a less popular language, but one that suits *me* and that I can grok
> easily? So at the moment, I having a few doubts about my even looking at Tcl,
> or Lisp, or Scheme, if I can't even put a bean on the table with these skills.
> What do you guys think?
I think I'm getting ready to freeze my ass off at campsites costing
$0..$5/night for about a month, until signature gathering season
begins, because nobody in Seattle is hiring me for my buzzword
non-compliant technical skills.
I also think that unless I'm willing to chase exceedingly mainstream
buzzwords, like "Java" or "C#", then chasing buzzwords is a lost cause.
Instead I need to learn consulting skills, i.e. the art of convincing
people that I know what I'm doing and can help them with their
problems. I think the HR drones will always find an excuse not to hire
me. "Oh you don't have this." "Oh you don't have that." "Oh there's
this gap in your employment history." "Oh you only know Version 7.0,
we want 7.1." I think all these corporations have got it tucked in the
back of their mind that they can get the work done in China. So, I'm
pretty much done with this dysfunctional dance of chasing job ads for
things I don't exactly quite want to do. I need to tell people that
MATTER what I can do for them, i.e. go do the networking with business
and engineering types, not HR. A headhunter told me as much a few
months ago.
I've also wondered whether learning C# would make me more productive,
in terms of having better programming tools available, and open some
doors in the Seattle region. But, the question I had to ask was, "Does
C# actually lead me to jobs I want to do?" So far, looking at the ads,
the answer has been "no." Which is a bummer, because if knowledge of a
language was the only thing in the way of interesting work, I'd just go
learn the silly language. The problem, as I see it, is the Java / C#
universe is mostly boring work. At least judging by the ads.
In sum: less about language skills. More about job hunting skills.
Mine are still pretty bad. That said, Christmas is a hard time of year
to do anything good.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
| |
| Mallor 2006-12-13, 4:24 pm |
|
Shiro Kawai wrote:
> Merrilee Larson wrote:
>
>
> I don't understand why you should ask. You can learn both.
> I mean, the industry-demanded ones and more esoteric ones.
I always love these kinds of answers. "We techies have all the time in
the world. We don't mind blowing it on every single sundry technology
out there, 'cuz it's FUN!" What a bunch of bull. Every language has a
lot of practical grungy stuff associated with it that wastes your time
and renders you non-productive while you're learning it. It makes
sense to skip it if the language does not really suit your career
aspirations.
> If you think you don't have time or energy or whatever to learn
> as many languages, you're in trouble. There are people who
> learn and use new languages out of their curiosity or just
> for fun, and make stuff with them. Even without thinking
> what it has to do with their resume. And you're competing
> with such people in the job market.
In other words, you're competing with young, stupid, gullible, cheap
Energizer Bunnies who really haven't seen enough yet to know what a
Complete Waste Of Time is. HR depts. love these people. They're
obedient, thankful for low pay, and crank out lotsa widgets. Until
they wake up a little bit into their careers and say, "Um, WTF am I
doing here?"
> After all, languages are just tools to solve problems and build
> things. For each given problem, a professional programmer
> chooses the best tool to tackle it. A company hires people
> because they can solve problems, not just because they know
> certain programming language. So, what you should go after
> is to learn how to solve (practical) problems. That includes
> finding a right programming language to do so.
I agree, but one of the practical problems is how people think. i.e.
Perception and Politics.
Example:
- you hired someone for a game project, because he did some thingy you
thought was . It happened to be written in Scheme. Great for him.
- I write a useful build system in CMake for the Chicken Scheme
compiler. It runs on at least 3 mainstream operating systems and at
least 5 compilers, probably more, but nobody cares. Builds aren't that
/ sexy, they're taken for granted. Even though, based on my
experience actually trying to get open source software to work on
Windows, they shouldn't be.
Conclusion: there's what you think is the Right Way To Do Things [TM],
and then there's what other programmers actually perceive as .
Or maybe there's another conclusion. You hired him
engineer-to-engineer. I've been talking to HR drones who don't know
shit.
"Are my skills really inadequate?" or "Am I just jobhunting wrong?" is
a maddening question. It was not like this when I entered industry in
1996. When I finally did my jobhunting, it lasted all of 2 w s.
Granted I had a lot of dry runs for several years before that, toying
with the whole process. When they hired me in a junior
contract-to-hire capacity, I knew to what degree I was being bilked. I
accepted it; within 6 months they made me a Sr. Software Engineer. I
was, clearly, quite a lot more experienced and qualified than the
junior programmers they took on. 3 years of sitting around writing
your own 3D rendering libraries from scratch will do that.
In 1996, programmers were gods. Then the dot.com bust happened. In
2006, programmers are widgets. There are too many of 'em, too well
trained, in too many countries.
When I went through college, 3D classes weren't even regularly offered.
In fact that's why I was an Anthropology major, not a CS major. They
cancelled my 3D class, just when it was time to decide my major. Plus,
CS profs are mostly a dead bore. I didn't get a good one until I
finally got to take that 3D class as a junior. He was a good one
because he was a maverick, he didn't "fit" the rest of the Cornell CS
dept. The concerns of 3D graphics were more practical than typical CS
concerns, i.e. bit twiddling.
Now of course 3D is just a checklist item to a lot of people. It's
mainstream.
The danger of people telling you you're a god, is you may actaully
believe them. Then you do things like quit your job to find your own
way in the world, confident that the money will always be there. Naive
about how economies can change, or mature.
I hope some new Next Big Thing comes along soon, that I actually like.
Because I never got into programming to be someone's widget.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
| |
| Thant Tessman 2006-12-13, 4:24 pm |
| Merrilee Larson wrote:
[...]
> In my lurkings of this and the Lisp Newsgroup, I've come to the conclusion that
> Lisp/Scheme hackers are to computer languages as PHDs are to Academia/Industry.
Scheme is not a difficult language to learn. It's perceived by some as a
difficult language to learn because it is often used to solve difficult
problems because it is better suited to solving difficult problems. But
I've taught people Scheme. If it's for their job, and they've never
heard of Scheme, and they don't know that it's supposed to be difficult,
they have no trouble at all.
"well, take it from an old hand: the only reason it would be easier
to program in C is that you can't easily express complex problems
in C, so you don't." -- Erik Naggum, comp.lang.lisp
> [...] So
> what's the problem? Or is Lisp/Scheme simply not the right tool for *any*
> application other than AI projects? I'm just curious!
The real problem is that a whole lot of the software industry is really
about coordinating the actions of a whole lot of programmers. This is a
cultural/managerial problem, not a technical one. The real reason
object-oriented methodology was such a success is not because it's an
inherently better way to construct software, but because it served as a
sort of cultural 'seed crystal' around which programmers could begin to
coordinate their efforts in advancing the state of the craft. XML is
another example of this phenomenon. It is a truly wretched creation born
of ignorance and lack of refinement. But it served as a technical
rallying point at a critical juncture in the development of the industry.
Consequently, languages like Scheme shine most where there is less need
to coordinate with the rest of the industry as a whole. But what this
means is that their use gathers far less attention. (And indeed, some
businesses deliberately avoid drawing attention to the tools and
techniques they consider to be giving them a strategic advantage as long
as they're moderately comfortable that those tools won't disappear out
from under them.)
> [...] Should I go after a language that's currently in
> demand in Industry - i.e. be able to earn a living more easily - or should I
> learn a less popular language, but one that suits *me* and that I can grok
> easily? [...]
Of course you need to coordinate your efforts with your opportunities,
but unless you enjoy programming, you're setting yourself up for
disappointment. If you do enjoy programming, the Scheme programming
language is particularly fun--Brandon Van Every's less-than-constructive
mumblings notwithstanding.
-thant
| |
| Mallor 2006-12-13, 4:24 pm |
|
Thant Tessman wrote:
>
> Of course you need to coordinate your efforts with your opportunities,
> but unless you enjoy programming, you're setting yourself up for
> disappointment. If you do enjoy programming, the Scheme programming
> language is particularly fun--Brandon Van Every's less-than-constructive
> mumblings notwithstanding.
What the hell does "enjoy programming" mean anyways? ANY programming?
You didn't have anything positive to say about XML, other than it got a
lot of people moving in the same direction at one point in programming
history. Surely, you don't enjoy XML? There's a lot of crap out
there. When you want to get something tangible accomplished, you have
to put up with crap.
I *enjoyed* writing DEC Alpha ASM code. But to get Chicken Scheme
well-supported on Windows, I had to learn the CMake build tool and do a
lot of gruntwork. I wouldn't call it painful, but neither would I call
it enjoyable, especially for $0. It would be quite a bit more
palatable if it was worth $$$$$. But at $0, at least it's an
acceptable tradeoff in the service of higher goals. Things like
writing games, which I hope I *will* enjoy at some point. If I can
just get through the mountains of crap that keep getting in the way of
me writing the games.
Why did we even go with CMake? Because GNU Autoconf / Automake is
*horrid*. We do *not* enjoy working with that shit; the only reason we
still have an Automake build, is concession to reality. Reality is, we
know that build works, and that CMake hasn't gotten enough testing yet.
But we will dance with glee on the day that we finally slay the beast
known as Autohell.
Don't let other programmers con you into thinking you're supposed to
enjoy everything about programming, or that you're a lesser being for
finding their bullshit less than interesting. If you're yawning at a
conference, there's a reason for it. My advice: be the XXXXXXX that
walks out of the room mid-session and finds something actually worth
your time. The farther you go in programming, the more you'll realize
how much crap is out there. Actually, you can realize that just
trolling through Sourceforge and trying to build people's projects -
how do you think I came to be a build engineer? Most of programming is
not elegant. Most of it is ad-hoc engineering, and badly done at that.
Most of it is based on monetary and political considerations, not
technical ones.
If you don't enjoy *anything* about programming then yes, you're in
trouble. Find another industry.
During the bust, I did a lot of soul searching about that. I concluded
that there are parts of programming I jolly well do like, but that the
industry is full of shitwork. I resolved not to do it, and not to be
afraid of not doing it. Even if it left me poor - which to date, it
has. But, I don't think it will in the future; I have plans.
In any event, focus your attention on the tools and technologies you
actually do enjoy. If what you do is too painful, eventually you're
going to quit doing it. Also, you will be competing against sick
perverts who actually enjoy the things you find painful. For instance,
I find it really hard to stomach that some people actually like
Autohell, but indeed they are out there. They've probably been doing
it for years and the reason they enjoy it, is because it's familiar to
them. Or at the other extreme, they're too young to know a silk purse
from a sow's ear. Any silly thing in programming is probably still
amusing to them.
One of my early career regrets, is I spent 3 years learning Linux
symin stuff on my own. At the time I thought it was entertaining,
as it was all new. After 3 years it got old though. One OS
reinstallation too many. I could have gotten paid to learn all of
that, with a part time job or something. The extra $$$$$ would have
helped my cause.
Cheers,
Brandon Van Every
| |
| Bruce Lewis 2006-12-14, 10:07 pm |
| Merrilee Larson <merrile@telus.net> writes:
> I can't for the life of me understand the following:
>
> In my lurkings of this and the Lisp Newsgroup, I've come to the conclusion that
> Lisp/Scheme hackers are to computer languages as PHDs are to Academia/Industry.
> The other languages certainly have their *gurus*, but you guys are so far above
> the bunch of them. That being my opinion (and I'm *never* wrong ;) ), why is
> Scheme/Lisp not on top of the language race?
Because the learning cost comes at the beginning. The first two hours
of s-expression programming are frustrating if you're accustomed to
C-like languages, and few have the patience to spend two days without
getting gratification.
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