Scheme / Lisp

[Rudy]

Does anyone program or know how to program in Lisp or Scheme (which is a dialect of Lisp)? Almost all of my programming knowledge is self-taught. I know PHP the best, although I have never taken a formal class in in it. I took an AP Computer Science course about 5 or 6 years ago in Java when I was in high school (I just graduated from college now - I was NOT a CS major).

I have been hired as an intern for at least 1 year for an organization where I will be helping them with their website. They run Drupal (so obviously I'll be doing a lot of PHP stuff). I'm not fluent in it, but its what I know best.

I don't want to be a programmer for the rest of my life, but I'm willing to do it for a year - and its paid!!

So anyway, seeing as I am still not a great programmer, my cousin suggested that I teach myself Scheme. I'm starting to go through the textbook (freely available online) that MIT uses in one of their introductory programming courses - which is on Scheme.

So, anyone here familiar with Scheme? Do you use it?

Edit:
FYI, here's a link to the book: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html

 

[Kate]

I don't know if it's still widely used, personally my most recent LISP codes dates back to 1989 *hehe*
But I believe the MIT book you quoted is a major reference in the field.

 

[Rudy]

Just curious, what did you use it for? I understand Lisp is usually used for local applications, although I've heard that it CAN be used on websites.

 

[Kate]

No serious appls, was just fumbling around with programming languages, I was also playing with Prolog at that time... Borland Turbo Pascal, Turbo C... all under MS-DOS of course

 

[cerebus]

I don't want to be a programmer for the rest of my life, but I'm willing to do it for a year - and its paid!!

So anyway, seeing as I am still not a great programmer, my cousin suggested that I teach myself Scheme. I'm starting to go through the textbook (freely available online) that MIT uses in one of their introductory programming courses - which is on Scheme.

So, anyone here familiar with Scheme? Do you use it?

Edit:
FYI, here's a link to the book: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

I did not use Scheme and to be honest hopefully never will. I did however use Common Lisp in a generic programming course (writing a web server in it, to be specific).

The reason that Lisp variations are very common in CS introductory courses are several. The very core reason would be that it is very suitable for functional programming. All of the common principles in the paradigm are easily understood and used in such a simple language - which is a big advantage as functioncal programming often feels "wrong" for many with some, but not much or widespread, programming experience.

And the rest of possible reasons that comes into mind:
- It is very suitable for meta programming
- The language constructs are few and the syntax extremely basic (even though odd for most).
- It can be used in virtually any enviroment, through different implementations.
- It is often used to extend applications that one might use later in the education.
- It was the first in many programmatic innovations that are featured in many of todays (other) popular languages.