Benefits of learning scheme?

Question

I\'ve just started one of my courses, as classes just began 2 weeks ago, and we are learning Scheme right now in one for I assume some reason later on, but so far from what he i

Answer 1

Scheme was used by NASA to program some of the Mars rovers. It's usage in the marketplace is pretty specific, but like I'm sure your teachers are telling you, the things you learn in Scheme will carry over to programming in general.

Answer 2

I see all these people here saying that while they would never actually use Scheme again it's nevertheless been a worthwhile language to learn because it forces a certain way of thinking. While this can be true, I would hope that you would learn Scheme because you eventually will find it useful and not simply as an exercise in learning.

Though it's not blazingly fast like a compiled language, nor is it particularly useful at serving websites or parsing text, I've found that Scheme (and other lisps by extension) has no parallel when it comes to simplicity, elegance, and powerful functional manipulation of complex data structures. To be honest, I think in Scheme. It's the language I solve problems in. Don't give up on or merely tolerate Scheme - give it a chance and it won't disappoint you.

By the way, the best IDE for Scheme is DrScheme, and it contains language extensions to do anything you can do in another language, and if you find something it can't you can just use the C FFI and write it yourself.

Answer 3

It's a functional programming language and will do well broaden your experience.

Even if you don't use it in the real world doesn't mean it doesn't have any value. It will help you master things like recursion and help to force you to think of problems in different ways than you normally would.

I wish my school forced us to learn a functional programming language.

Answer 4

Some people say Scheme's greatest strength is as a teaching language. While it is very beneficial to learn functional programming (it's an entirely new way of thinking) another benefit in learning scheme is that it is also "pure". Sure it can't do a ton of stuff like java, but that's also what's great about it, it's a language made entirely of parentheses, alphanumeric characters, and a mere handful other punctuations.

In my intro course, we are taught Java, and I see lots of my friends struggling with 'public static void main' even though that's not the point of the program and how the profs have no choice but to 'handwave' it until they're more advanced. You don't see that in Scheme.

If you really want to learn what Scheme can do in a piece of cake that is really hard to implement in languages like Java, I suggest looking at this: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-12.html#%_sec_1.3

This is probably the best book written on Scheme.

Answer 5

Languages like LISP (and the very closely related Scheme) are to programming what Latin is to English.

You may never speak Latin a day in your normal life again after taking a course, but simply learning a language like Latin will improve your ability to use English.

The same is true for Scheme.

Answer 6

My problem was when learning this we learned clisp right along with it. I couldn't keep the two strait to save my life.

What I did learn from them though was how to write better c and java code. This is simply because of the different programming style I learned. I have adapted more of the functional style into some of my programming and It has helped me in some cases.

I would never want to program in scheme or lisp again if I didn't have to, but I am glad that I at least did a little in them just to learn the different way to program.