Programming

[Mike or Penny Novack]

> Hello
> I have been using gncash for about 12 months and find it good to use.
> I am interested in changing or writing some reports.
> Can any one help me to get going.
> In the past  I have programmed in Theos Basic and in Visual Basic.
>
> I have installed DrRacket as that seems to be the latest or best, however
> every time I open a uncompiled program it comes back with errors.
> My previous experience to learn is, to open a program see what it does
> when it runs, and then  look at the code.
>
> Hope you can help
>
> Bert

Bert, you perhaps want to dip your feet in LISP (scheme is a lisp 
dialect). The problem is that you probably only think of programming in 
procedural terms but this would be functional programming. Those of us 
who did "computer science" know can be proved to be equivalent but in 
practice really rather different*.

The reason I say first learn some elementary LISP is that are some 
simple, fun books to do that with but I'm not sure one for learning 
scheme directly.

Michael

* In procedural programming you write a process that proceeds by steps 
to the result (that does something). In functional programming you write 
a function that evaluates to something, but in fact, perhaps it isn't 
that something which you care about but what has happened during the 
evaluation that gives the result.
Michael