[LAU] Re: [OT] MIT Open Courseware informal study group?

[Bill White]

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Kjetil S. Matheussen wrote:
> 
> Bill White:
>>
>> I must admit, scheme leaves me somewhat cold.  I once wrote a prototype
>> of the symbol table for an Ada compiler in scheme, and I grew to dread
>> it as a tool.  It turns out to be hard to program without global
>> variables.
> 
> Scheme has global variables.

I have to admit, I don't remember the details.  I know that whenever I
wanted to put something in a global variable, some closure had been
created before the variable was set, and couldn't look it up when I
wanted it to be looked up.  It's probably no worse than C++, but it
was annoying.

I have also decided strong typing is really a good idea.  I got really
tired of passing a list which represented a symbol into a function which
represented, say, a generic binding.  You don't really know if the value
you have passed in is the wrong type until things blow up.  I know, if
I never made any mistakes it would not be a problem, that's not going
to happen soon.

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