Re: If Perl was my first language...

Rather than a second language, per se, I'd suggest that you learn some functional programming techniques (hardcore list manipulation and lambda-slinging, mostly). Whether you do that with Haskell, Scheme, or Perl is up to you. (Perl has pretty much all the support you need for a basic intro to functional programming techniques -- map, anonymous subs, closures; you name it.)

Breaking out of the pervasive loops-and-variables mindset can be quite rewarding, and opens up a number of new WTDIs. (WsTDI?)

-- F o x t r o t U n i f o r m Found a typo in this node? /msg me % man 3 strfry

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Re^2: If Perl was my first language... by kiat (Vicar) on Jul 09, 2004 at 04:12 UTC
Thanks, FoxtrotUniform! Does Scheme run on Windows? I was looking to install Scheme a while back but wasn't sure what to look for.	[reply]
Re^3: If Perl was my first language... by broquaint (Abbot) on Jul 09, 2004 at 06:08 UTC
A good place to start with Scheme on Windows is DrScheme, as it has a nice GUI with some decent documentation to boot and works straight out of the box (see. zip file). Bringing it back to perl, the ever-inventive Autrijus has made `Inline::MzScheme` which allows you to interface with `mzscheme` within perl. If that's not enough the industrious samtregar has created `Inline::Guile` which is an interface to Guile, the GNU implementation of Scheme (as I understand it). HTH `_________ broquaint`	[reply]
Re^4: If Perl was my first language... by kiat (Vicar) on Jul 09, 2004 at 13:02 UTC
Thanks, broquaint! I just installed DrScheme and I'm now having a little fun with the parentheses :)	[reply]
Re^5: If Perl was my first language... by stvn (Monsignor) on Jul 09, 2004 at 21:51 UTC
Re^3: If Perl was my first language... by calin (Deacon) on Jul 09, 2004 at 11:06 UTC
There are zillions of Scheme interpreters. It seems that everybody, at some point in their lives, write or at least try to write a Scheme implementation. -- Well, I haven't written one yet, but I have ported one to Minix. Lost the source when my laptop was stolen (aeons ago), and then lost interest. (Why Minix? The beast had only 2 MB of RAM and couldn't run anything else :) ) schemers.org is a good resource for schemers. The FAQ lists some of the implementation. For a quick start try this Java applet straight from your browser. Did you know that you can have a complete Scheme implementation in your pocket?	[reply]