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From: Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@d2-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Ada & Scripting
Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 11:43:31 +0000 (UTC)
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Randy Brukardt <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
: Bobby D. Bryant wrote in message ...
:>I don't want you to use anything you don't want, but this looks like a
:>good place to insert a basic observation on that:  When I taught the
:>freshman-level Foundations of Computer Science course here I spent
: *one*
:>lecture on Scheme syntax, and started in on recursion and induction in
: the
:>second lecture.
: 
: 
: Gee, those must be terribly slow freshmen. :-)
: Considering that the syntax of LISP is essentially:
:   expr ::= identifier | number | ( {expr} )
: Getting it do to something is a bit more interesting; but that's
: semantics, not syntax.

Lispers often say that :-). But is isn't true. Both from the perspective
of an average young student, who will likely perceive "defun" as part
of Lisp syntax, I think, and also from the Scheme perspective, which
has standardized

  expression ::= variable
	| literal
	| procedure call
	| lambda expression
	| conditional
	| assignment
	| derived expression
	| macro use
	| macro block

with lots of syntax rules preceding and following.
(The parentheses are in the list rule)
http://www.schemers.org/Documents/Standards/R5RS/HTML/r5rs-Z-H-10.html

In PLT Scheme/DrScheme, there are language subsets. e.g. corresponding
to beginners' level, where you don't have LET.


Georg