Re: criticisms while attempting to learn lisp

nytpu has some criticisms of lisp and emacs.

Yeah, it’s legit to say that Emacs’ default tab/spaces stuff is pretty awful.

I also agree that there’s not really a good tutorial for Scheme.

Where I disagree is here, where Nytpu writes:

> Like the main GB ASM tutorial is perfect because it teaches you the basics on the way to making a hello world program which is pretty involved in GB Assembly; you always have a clear goal and most everything you’re learning is to achieve that. Maybe Scheme learning resources being the way they are stems from a lot of Scheme curriculum coming from colleges where they just dump shit on you and expect you to learn it.

First of all, eww, that’s gross. That’s a really disgusting and disparaging way to describe these learning resources, which are hard to make (obviously, since they’ve failed—I’ve also tried writing one that didn’t end up very good so it stays in the drawer for now; I might take another stab at it one day).

I went through that same GM ASM tutorial before I started to learn lisp (so that musta been more than twenty years ago. It was just a txt file).

I was quite frustrated with the build up approach. To write “hello world” it has you basically create your own font with the tile map system. It’s many many chapters before the “hello world” appears.

That’s not what a “hello world” is. I get it, it’s cheeky, and the tutorial is overall very good. I just was frustrated and confused when I first started it. It’s 159 lines of assembly code to create and display a “hello world” graphic.

The point of the build-up in that tutorial is to teach you all about that graphics stuff.

The point of the build-up in the more, uh, “academical” Scheme resources is to teach you about CS theory nerd stuff.

In both cases the build-up is there for a reason, and, in both cases the build-up is kinda frustrating.

Nytpu, you already know how to program, so for you, and for the rest of the already-know-how-to-program audience, I’m gonna make it easier.

I’ll use your program as an example.

Scheme, if you already know how to program other stuff