[GoLUG] Scheme -- guile3, may all your parentheses be in the correct order

[Hendrik Boom]

On Sun, Aug 18, 2024 at 04:30:00AM +0000, David Billsbrough wrote:
> All,
> 
> I downloaded an Ada compiler to check it out because I didn't have the time to be so confused by Rust.   :-)
> After seeing the Ada compiler (GNU gnat) and development tools are huge and the docs are non-ending
> I thought I might try checking out something a little 'smaller' like a 'lisp' or a 'scheme' next.   They are older
> languages so they might be easier.  Right?
> 
> So ... after about three days at burning the midnight 'oil' I have a few small hello world and a sort of a port
> of a simple date counting utility ...  <g>
> 
>   https://github.com/kc4zvw/daystogo.scm/tree/main

This may be off-topic in the current discussion on dates, but
in https://github.com/kc4zvw/daystogo.scm/blob/main/README.txt you ask,
    "why is this language so strange?"
I'm not sure what you think is strange about it, but way back in the 1950's
it was invented by McCarthy as a direct implementation of the
mathematical theory of recursive function theory.
That theory was then important because it was the basis of a current
formulation of Godel's theorems.

The implementation was entirely written in assembly language, but you
can see an outline of its interpreter in the (now ancient) book Lisp 1.5.

I remember hearing that they were planning to make a less strange version
to be called Lisp 2.  But the original Lisp really caught on because of its
combination of simplicity and generality (perhaps due to its strangeness)
and Lisp 2 never saw the light of day.

The most significant change in the direction of Lisp was the invention
of Scheme. 

Which did nothing to change its "strangeness".

-- hendrik