Looking Out To Sea

A few weeks ago I mentioned the idea of a study group at work, for the purpose of reading through some programming-relevant texts and discussing them. We’ve been working on Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) for a few weeks now. I’m enjoying it more than I expected. The exercises are mostly within grasp and I’m happy to note that I’m not being left behind intellectually. There are a few mathematical proof exercises I’ve been skipping and some of the more boring “run this computation by hand” are not worth taking to completion once you’ve seen the basic point. But mostly we’re following the exercises as planned.

Scheme is not so interesting so far. The parentheses still bug me and we haven’t got to the stage where dynamic typing has proven useful so I’m smarting from the lack of a decent type system. From what I remember when I skimmed the book in the past most of Scheme development involves creating ad hoc type systems in the runtime. :-) Many people insist that dynamic languages are good for something so hopefully this something will become apparent.

I have enjoyed several of the exercises which require rewriting recursive algorithms in an iterative style. Seeing the contrast and thinking up different routes to the end product is fun, and I’m glad we’ve got a unit test framework (SchemeUnit) to help in that regard. I tried to track down a Scheme version of QuickCheck but while one used to exist it’s disappeared off the net.