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From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry G. Baker)
Subject: Re: Could CommonLISP replace Scheme in SICP ?
Message-ID: <hbakerCxqwG8.2Fp@netcom.com>
Organization: nil
References: <Lucy.Hederman-141094145906@hederman.cs.tcd.ie> <37mpj7$3i4@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: Sun, 16 Oct 1994 03:02:31 GMT
Lines: 23

In article <37mpj7$3i4@agate.berkeley.edu> matt@cory.EECS.Berkeley.EDU (Matt Wright) writes:
>Lucy.Hederman@cs.tcd.ie (Lucy Hederman) writes:
>> [...] He can't see why, if Scheme is a dialect
>>of LISP, that it wouldn't be possible to teach SICP using CommonLISP.

>P.S.  On the other hand, after your students take SICP, they should be able
>to learn the differences between Scheme and Common Lisp in a week.  In fact,
>you could assign them the project of converting the Chapter 3 Metacircular
>Evaluator from a Scheme interpreter into a Common Lisp interpreter, and then
>they'd *really* understand the differences.
>
>P.P.S.  (Shameless plug:) This is why Brian Harvey's and my book "Simply
>Scheme" has an appendix about Common Lisp---we teach students how to do in
>Common Lisp what they've learned to do in Scheme, in a mere 10 pages.

You might also find the following article useful:

"Metacircular Semantics for Common Lisp Special Forms".  ACM Lisp
Pointers V,4 (Oct-Dec 1992), 11-20.  In my ftp directory.

      Henry Baker
      Read ftp.netcom.com:/pub/hbaker/README for info on ftp-able papers.

