I have a partial implementation of Scheme within Poplog which
I will use for my "Programming Paradigms" course next year. Is anybody
interested in collaborating in developing this implementation? Frankly,
I think it could be a winner, particularly as one could import various
stuff from POP-11.
I have thought about the language for this course quite a bit. There is no
suitable textbook in POP, and anyway (sigh!) I think that Scheme is
actually more sensible as a base, primarily because of the defined abstract
syntax.
Robbie Moll and I want to collaborate on a new textbook for this kind of
course. I think that a rational reconstruction of POP would be quite a
nice theme. Essentially, Scheme is treated as a microcosm of Computer
Science (like an updated Abelson and Sussman).
Within this framework, I woould like to do more treatment of Scheme S-exprs
as math. objects, and therefore a reconstruction of Boyer and Moore and
some of Burstall and Darlington.
One piece of good news about Scheme is that I believe the new IEEE standard
will require #F to be different from '() (i.e. <false> /= []). This will
make code generation with in Poplog nicer for conditionals. (I have this
news from the latest available Scheme description from MIT - I am still
waiting for the actual standard).
Robin
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