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

[Robert Heller]

At Sat, 22 Aug 2009 12:58:12 -0700 (PDT) "David T." <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 
> 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.

Scheme is a LISP variant.  Even for CS Majors / Grad Students LISP can
be a 'tough' language.  One either 'gets it' or one does not: "There
are 10 kinds of people: Lispers and everyone else" :-) (There are two
computer programmer jokes there.)

> 
> 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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> > gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
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> 
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>                                                                          

-- 
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