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########################
Introduction to Actinide
########################
Notes from Slack:
max:
may i give some unsolicited advice?
owen:
No, because now I want it so it’s solicited advice instead. What’s up?
max:
from what you have right now, it reads clearly like it was written by the
person who wrote the parser for the language
i would suggest a lighter introduction focusing on: what is this language
similar to (lisp?), what are its key differences from that other language,
and a few examples of something in language A versus your language
more or less, think about what you are looking for when visiting a new
project (language, library, framework, etc.): what's its purpose, what are
some simple ways i can do the thing, how is this different from other
similar projects
i know it's not especially "technical writing", but IMO that kind of thing
helps users have a mental framework for reading the rest of the docs
*****************
What is Actinide?
*****************
* A programming language
* A lisp
* Heavily inspired by Scheme
* Differences from other languages:
* Uniform, minimal syntax
* No operators, only functions
* The language itself is extensible
* Functional language
* What's it for?
* Customizing other programs
**********
Calculator
**********
Concepts introduced:
* Starting the REPL
* What is a REPL?
* Literal forms for numbers
* Built-in arithmetic forms (``+``, ``-``, ``*``, ``/``)
* Simple evaluation ("take the thing on the left, and do it to the rest of the list")
************************
Extending the calculator
************************
Concepts introduced:
* Names, symbols, and environments
* Definition forms (define)
* Flow control forms (if, lambda)
* Recursion
Fibbonaci example.
************
Fixing a bug
************
Concepts introduced:
* *Tail* recursion and why it's special
Redo fibboanci as a tail-recursive function.
*********************
Thinking functionally
*********************
Concepts introduced:
* Higher-order functions and why they're important
* Reduce
Redo fibbonaci as a fold.
****
Draw the rest of the owl
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