Programming Languages YET AGAIN (was Re: How to add reports into Gnucash)

David T. sunfish62 at yahoo.com
Sat Aug 22 15:58:12 EDT 2009


Don--

Thank you for this information. If I *really* wanted to learn how to program, I probably would have been a Comp Sci major in college. As it is, what I *really* want is to have a report that allows me to see monthly cash flow for a series of months. Unfortunately, I will have to hope that someone else with more ability, time, and determination will work out how to realize this report for me.

David

--- On Fri, 8/21/09, Donald Allen <donaldcallen at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Donald Allen <donaldcallen at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: How to add reports into Gnucash
> To: "Gnucash User Forum" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> Date: Friday, August 21, 2009, 12:29 PM
> From the gnucash user forum:
> 
> > I've been reading various Scheme tutorials and manuals
> trying to figure
> this out.
> > I am apparently a dense person, since neither the
> language nor the
> tutorials
> > and manuals are easy for me to decipher.
> 
> In my opinion there's a steep learning curve for Scheme if
> you're
> accustomed to imperative-style languages.  You may be
> dense, but this
> does not constitute evidence. :-)
> 
> > report never made it into the Gnucash release, I'd
> have to imagine that
> the report was broken and never got fixed. Too bad!
> 
> As it turns out, I've been studying the cash-flow.scm
> report (and
> posted a patch that needs to be triaged :-), so I'll see if
> I can get
> the "toodles" report to work and let you know what I
> find.  I'll try
> to get to it sometime this weekend.
> 
> My comments:
> 
> Scheme is very logical and simple, a brilliant language
> design. The problem
> is that it's *different*, both syntactically and
> semantically. If you are
> used to C, or (may G-d help us) C++, or Fortran, Scheme is
> a bigger leap
> from any of them than from any of them to any other of
> them. But once you
> get it (and it doesn't take much, because the beauty is the
> simplicity --
> Jerry Sussman and Guy Steele have found the minimal basis
> set), you will be
> amazed at the power. The syntax, by the way, is a feature,
> not a bug. You
> will discover this when editing Scheme programs with emacs,
> which knows more
> about the component parts of Scheme than it does of any
> other language. This
> is made possible by the syntactic simplicity. Cutting,
> copying, and pasting
> chunks of code is a breeze, compared to any other
> language.
> 
> I highly recommend "The Structure and Interpretation of
> Computer Programs",
> Sussman and Abelson, to all of you who are interested in
> *really* learning
> to program. Jerry Sussman and Hal Abelson are old friends
> (as is Julie
> Sussman, who made an important editorial contribution to
> this book), but I
> assure you that I am not receiving a commission :-) Get it
> and read it; it
> will be good for you.
> 
> /Don Allen
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