Newsgroups: comp.lang.dylan,comp.lang.lisp
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From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry Baker)
Subject: Re: Prefix syntax
Message-ID: <hbaker-2103951221550001@192.0.2.1>
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References: <18426.9503201324@subnode.aiai.ed.ac.uk> <neves-2003951134150001@129.105.100.185>
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 20:19:23 GMT
Lines: 29
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.dylan:3824 comp.lang.lisp:17140

In article <neves-2003951134150001@129.105.100.185>,
neves@neves.ils.nwu.edu (David Neves) wrote:

> :  > It will be hard enough to get this audience to believe that a garbage-
> :  > collected environment can possibly be fast enough, and that they needn't
> :  > worry about pointers and addresses any more, without trying to convince
> :  > them that they need to read wads of parentheses too.
> I may be wrong but it is my own experience is that COND is the cause of a
> lot of parenthesis errors and discomfort with novices.  Starting them with
> IF and WHEN should cut down on this considerably.
>   
> Also intro Lisp courses often reteach (or probably teach for the first
> time) recursion and so novices get a extra dose of complexity.  They
> associate their frustration with the language rather than the content.

The COND parenthesis problem completely disappears with a decent
parenthesis-oriented editor + pretty-printer.  Once this is done,
students often find COND slightly more convenient, since dispatches
have more than 2 branches.

Re recursion:  In my experience of teaching undergraduates, recursion is
far easier to teach and understand than iteration.  The _only_ people who
had any problem with recursion were those who had had their brains damaged
(perhaps permanently) due to early exposure to Basic and/or assembly
language.

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