2 posts tagged “newlisp”
I started looking at the language Objective Caml, and I gotta say, i'm losing interest VERY fast. All I really wanted to know is how to get some user input. This sort of thing is not difficult to figure out in most languages (though exceptions do of course exist). So I tried googling something like ""objective caml" input", not much there, so I got a bit more creative:
""objective caml" stdin"
""objective caml" read"
That got me something, a vague reference to a command called "read_line". Cool, it could have been easier to find, but hey, now I have a starting point. So I look that up a bit, and literally all you can find is it's prototype. While this is probably ok for people who know a bit about programming, it certainly doesn't go into any detail about it's more interesting uses. Not to mention if you don't know any languages, you're pretty much up the creek.
Now, I will admit that I was being highly impatient in my searches, but this is pretty crappy. If I have this much trouble trying to learn to take input, I can only fathom the hours I could spend later on trying to figure out how to do something obscure. You look at Perl for instance, and you can find more information on dang well near any routine then you will ever need (or want).
This isn't meant to single out O'Caml as a particularly tough language to pick up either. Anyone ever tried Haskell? Holy cow! I wouldn't consider myself adept at ANY language, but I have working knowledge of several, so generally picking up pieces of a new one isn't too difficult.
Haskell is a whole new experience. I can only guess that if you have the right mindset it is an absoute pleasure to work with, but without it, it would be akin to a small child trying to wrap their mind around quantum physics. Granted I knew it would be worse for me, having programmed mostly Perl. Perl is pretty unique, and is known to fairly well cripple programmers if it is their first language. FYI, never did get anywhere in Haskell, still don't know how to use any of it.
Forth... wow. Quite a new concept as well. There is a good bit of documentation around, but I never did find any I cared much for. In fairness though, I didn't give forth it's due dilligence.
I know that with some languages it can be argued that it simply hasn't been around long enough to have good documentation. I don't buy this too much. NewLisp for instance is developed by a pretty small community, and hasn't been around very long, but has some great documentation.
I'm really looking for a small compiling, very fast, but decently programmer friendly language, and am having a difficult time. ANSI C is kinda my best choice for small compiling/fast (and boy is it ever both of those), but it is certainly not programmer friendly. There is also C++, while it is a fair bit nicer to program in, it adds a great deal of overhead in compiling. I wish there was a good, small, optimizing compiler for Perl code. I pretty much wouldn't use anything else.
Seriously Perl community. Someone should make one. I know that it would be insanely difficult (maybe impossible, I have no idea), but can you imagine it. There really wouldn't be a good reason to use anything else for any common task.
Oh well, the research goes on I suppose.
ADDENDUM :
Oh yeah, one more thing : APL ... yeah... read the article. This is one I can pretty much guess I will never understand.
A special note to any people out there fairly new to NewLisp, remember that an "if" statement REQUIRES a "begin" as the first command if you want to do anymore then one line of commands. Good gravy, I just spend about 20 minutes trying to figure out why my code wasn't working, and I had forgotten the begin command.
Only some things require begin (the while loops for instance, do not), however, it is safe to use in all loops if you just feel like being in the habit.
And for anyone who hasn't heard of NewLisp, check it out, it's pretty cool.
