Hello!

Which are the best text editors for Scheme?

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On Friday, February 19, 2021 at 10:52:50 AM UTC, Torbjörn Svensson Diaz wrote:

Hello!

Which are the best text editors for Scheme?

Emacs's supposed to be good
I've enjoyed using Racket's editor for small programs

Silas

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I long ago learned not to recommend text editors, that way lies a flame war. My advice: pick an editor and
see what support it has for proper indentation, parenthesis matching, and syntax coloring (if you want it) for
Scheme. The ability to run a REPL within the editor makes programming very much smoother. I have heard of
people happily Scheming in Emacs, the Vim family, Eclipse, Lugaru's Epsilon editor, Sublime Text, and VSCode,
among others. It is true that parenthesis matching will make life much easier for the Schemer, but the conveniences
offered by an unfamiliar editor may be outweighed by the comfort offered by a familiar one.

For reference (and I'm specifically not advocating this for everyone, or even anyone but me), my personal Scheme
environment comprises Emacs, the geiser and paredit Emacs libraries, and a few customizations of my own. -- v

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On Saturday, February 20, 2021 at 3:40:48 AM UTC, Vincent Manis wrote:

I long ago learned not to recommend text editors, that way lies a
flame war.

Hah!

The ability to run a REPL within the editor makes programming very
much smoother.

Indeed! Hence enjoyment of DrRacket

but the conveniences offered by an unfamiliar editor may be
outweighed by the comfort offered by a familiar one.

For more lesser known editors, Sam and Acme from Plan 9 are fun
to play with
- Sam for file looping X command, commonly used to strip CRLF
- Acme for file browser and *text* based interface - Middle click to
execute *any* text. Point to focus fun to play with also

Silas

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On Friday, February 19, 2021 at 5:52:50 AM UTC-5, Torbjörn Svensson Diaz wrote:

Hello!

Which are the best text editors for Scheme?

Which are the best WOMEN for ____?

Best for whom, regardless?

Posing a question via a superlative sans any criteria for assessing fitness for the necessarily subjective beholder leaves the question wide open.

I'll respond from a vantage point assuming that question poser wants to LEARN scheme as one of the desired outcomes.

Though I use emacs and emacs lisp on a daily basis I wouldn't recommend it over Edwin
-- the editor which comes with MIT scheme --
https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=edwin%20editor
as if one wants to LEARN scheme
it makes more sense to have an editor which has
a scheme engine under the hood AND source code in scheme itself.

When using emacs, the source code and variant of lisp is emacs lisp as its primary domain of usage is text editing.

With edwin the dialect of lisp is scheme as the UNcommon lisp, and Scheme supports metalinguistic abstraction as a general means for implementing any imaginable domain of application ... including text editing.
EG scheme is s Domain Specific Language ENGINE in a way which emacs Lisp was pimped out for A -- singular -- Domain of Application.

Thus, for anyone wishing to learn scheme it makes more sense to me to have emacs-like features which are implemented in scheme itself.
And there is nothing to prevent one from configuring both edwin and any flavor of emacs to behave similarly to the same key sequences.

What creature to do want to be inside the Skinner Box responding to the stimuli you present it?
A Scheme responder and transactor ... or an emacs lisp transactor ... or proprietary algorithms with no corresponding source code provided at all?

I'd argue that in any case you'd want your editor to have a scripting language capable of holding a dialog with you via a REPL, and moreover have the syntax of that scripting language be homoiconic to facilitate metaprogramming.
So why pick a/one editor?
Why not acquire an assortment and try them at the kinds of activities you'd perform with them?

FWIW ...

I hope this helps you decide which editors to try on for size in your personal investigations.

Cheers!

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On 2021-02-21 05:44, gene wrote:

On Friday, February 19, 2021 at 5:52:50 AM UTC-5, Torbjörn Svensson
Diaz wrote:

Hello!

Which are the best text editors for Scheme?

Which are the best WOMEN for ____?

Best for whom, regardless?

Posing a question via a superlative sans any criteria for assessing
fitness for the necessarily subjective beholder leaves the question
wide open.

OK, the best Scheme text editor intended for a Scheme noob, then.

I'd argue that in any case you'd want your editor to have a scripting language capable of holding a dialog with you via a REPL, and moreover
have the syntax of that scripting language be homoiconic to facilitate metaprogramming.

So why pick a/one editor?
Why not acquire an assortment and try them at the kinds of activities
you'd perform with them?

Which text editors have these qualities then?

FWIW ...

I hope this helps you decide which editors to try on for size in your personal investigations.

Thanks for your reply.

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I guess I didn't make my answer clear in my previous post. Trying to learn a new language while trying to learn a new editor is often a bad idea. Your best bet is to see whether there's any Scheme support for your current editor, so that you can focus on
learning and using the language, rather than getting used to a whole new environment. If you've already chosen MIT Scheme, then its Edwin editor is certainly an excellent choice. Similarly with Racket and Dr Racket. However, those systems aren't always
usable: MIT-Scheme isn't currently supported on Windows, and DrRacket may not be usable on less powerful machines. So: if you aren't using one of those systems, stay with your current editor, if at all possible.

One editor feature that is absolutely essential, though, is automatic parenthesis matching. So take a look at your current editor and see whether it supports it.

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On Friday, February 19, 2021 at 5:52:50 AM UTC-5, ___________ wrote:

Hello!

Which are the best text editors for Scheme?

Which are the best WOMEN for ____?

Best for whom, regardless?

Posing a question via a superlative sans any criteria for assessing fitness for the necessarily subjective beholder leaves the question wide open.

OK, the best Scheme text editor intended for a Scheme noob, then.

Gene> The superlatively best qua `best' for a generic noob wishing to learn scheme, or a Generic noob wishing to promote individualism via Augmentative AI while trying to hit the moving target of philomathic rugged individualist on a full blown Quixotic
quest to BECOME ... to manifest as nebulous clump of ink-blot features trying to integrate in a Real Boy?

I'd argue that in any case you'd want your editor to have a scripting language capable of holding a dialog with you via a REPL, and moreover have the syntax of that scripting language be homoiconic to facilitate metaprogramming.
So why pick a/one editor?
Why not acquire an assortment and try them at the kinds of activities you'd perform with them?

Which text editors have these qualities then?

Gene> As per the Dunning-Krugger effect, I can't comment on ALL editors as I don't have direct, first person experience with every editor ever conjured into existence.
However, I will recommend that you perform a comparison test between GNU Emacs and Edwin in which you use BOTH in an alternating fashion while pimping out their start-up files such that the same keystrokes effectuate the same, predictable, repeatable
behaviors.

If you can manage to do this I expect that you'll not only learn Scheme, but scheme as contrasted with emacs lisp vis comparative linguistics phenomena.

And if you use BOTH Edwin and GNU emacs while viewing and composing code for GIMP via ScriptFu, and AutoLisp for any given CAD package which is scriptable via autolisp you'll have a broader education still.

I'll start you off with a bit of head unbinding which the Sacred Order of Algebra Teachers and Math Weenies have yet to learn, even though John McCarthy provided them -- we KNOW who THEY ARE -- an object lesson when he conceived of Lisp notation ... last
century, last millennium:
when rethinking and reframing the PEMDAS mnemonic used to (mis)encode and (mis)decode expressions (mis)coded in Algebraic notations all the operations following the P for parentheses are complete and utter BULLSHIT!
The precedence of explicitly expressed fully-parenthesized symbolic expressions expressed within all of both the common and uncommon lisps proceeds from innermost towards outermost until all parentheticals are evaluated, Period. Full stop.

In closing, I can't KNOW how brain damaged any given scheme noob IS prior to making humanistic recommendations.

To wit, peeps using phones smarter than they are have been conditioned to drag-and-drop and `click' on icons.

Is it kinder to keep them as consumers of products and `apps', sedated on soma, and distracted with the modern day equivalent of centrifugal bumble puppy ... or to have their ears-as-barbs surgically removed to facilitate the removal of their heads from
their asshats pursuant to using TUIs displacive of GUIs?

Or would it be kinder to transmogrify their glass belly buttons into periscopes and/or telescopes and forgo the restoration of stereoscopic vision altogether ... thereby precluding the necessity of having to manifest the interventionist chore of having
to pull their heads out of their asses?

Scheme towards greater Mindfulness via mathetics.

Cheers!

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On Monday, February 22, 2021 at 3:37:44 PM UTC-5, Vincent Manis wrote:

I guess I didn't make my answer clear in my previous post.

Trying to learn a new language while trying to learn a new editor is often a bad idea.

I take your point.
When I've recommended emacs to individuals weened on pull-down menus, drag-and-drop, point-and-click GUI-paradigmatic brain washing, many if not most of them have balked at the Wonky Old school look-and-feel of a not fully GUI-ized look-at-the-pretty-
pixels User interface.
So now when I recommend Emacs -- if at all -- I honor the 3-weeks-to-integrate-a-new-behavior time delay.
I tell them with all the authoritarian repugnance I can muster +Pay no attention to the man behind THAT curtain+
FOR THE FIRST THREE WEEKS, ONLY USE the pull-down menus! At all cost do NOT even look at the scratch buffer
and certainly -- most of all -- do not attempt to compose a symbolic expression via the syntax of the AI-capable language atop which what seems to be a munchkin-friendly editor qua `editor' -- yeah, that's the ticket -- which your Minchin mentality
couldn't handle
BECAUSE you are NO Wizard ... let alone the Great and Powerful Oz.!!!
I command it thus!

No oppositional-defiant snowflake weened on political correctness or deconstructionism can let that bait from a straight white OPPRESSIVE male stand unchallenged. So they immediately find the scratch buffer and start dabbling in the `scripting language'
underpinning either Emacs or Edwin -- if Edwin even has a scratch buffer allowing scheme expressions to be evaluated WITHIN the would-be editor-only itself.


Your best bet ...

Gene> ... is always to bet ON yourself, rather than against your Self!

...is to see whether there's any Scheme support for your current editor,

Rumor has it holmiids only fairly recently figured out that babies usher forth for wormholes in space time -- if not vulvas -- following an interActivity transpiring roughly 9 months prior.
Also awareness that the Morning Star IS The Evening star had escaped our ancestors until fairly recently in human history.
Not that I'm not a fan of compartmentalization -- especially when picking my nose and scratching my ass (hint: Never use the same index finger, and sequence is important, especially when not cleansing indexical digit between between multifunctional
application of said effectuator) -- but what if one's editor IS the translator of the language one is attempting to LEARN?
Might one learn how to STOP compartmentalizing pursuant to maintaining the DELUSION of closure and certainty?
(EG ALL of the serious programmers I've met along the way have tested as MBTI INT_; when the last letter is `J' a preference for closure, certainty, and the compartmentalization of not only time, but TOOLS is manifested.)

so that you can focus on learning and using the language, rather than getting used to a whole new environment.

Gene> Ugggg ... as if words of wisdom.
When one is learning a new language the newness is pervasively `whole new' anyway.
My response is tantamount to recommending learning on the Edwin implementation of Scheme.
Rather than using another scheme REPL I'm recommending Edwin AS the scheme REPL as well as GNU Emacs which has Emacs Lisp as it's REPL.
If my advice is followed, the self-paced self-directed mathetics-honoring LEARNER learns the language via what compartmentalizing FOOLS mischaracterize as a single-purpose tool known as an editor qua editor.
Hint: INTJs also often suffer from functional fixedness, as per the Unix small tools ethos wherein an editor IS an editor and a compiler IS a compiler, and never the two shall meet.

If you've already chosen MIT Scheme, then its Edwin editor is certainly an excellent choice.

Gene> Edwin is not only an editor qua editor; at bare minimum it is SCRIPTED via scheme itself.
Question: What's better than homoiconicity?
Answer: The ability to use the syntax of the language you are learning to push the editors buttons to GENErate the source code you will want to evaluate.

Similarly with Racket and Dr Racket.

Gene> Nope.
Dr. Racket -- formerly Dr. Scheme -- PANDERS to the GUI-mutilated minds entering college at the colleges and universities in which professors using the college RACKET are gainfully employed to pedantically, pedagogically TEACH `problem solving' and such..

Gene> If one wishes to adopt the mindset induced by the use of the language one is learning it's better to immerse oneself in a CULTURE which uses that language as it's lingua franca.
If you want to learn French move to Montreal or Paris.
If you want to learn Logo move to the `math land' of Seymour Papert.
If you want to learn Scheme immerse yourself in Edwin.

However, those systems aren't always usable: MIT-Scheme isn't currently supported on Windows, and DrRacket may not be usable on less powerful machines.

So: if you aren't using one of those systems, stay with your current editor, if at all possible.

Gene> Wait ... are you Macon (EG Makin') Leary of `Accidental Tourist' fame? Should he wear 2 condoms and a raincoat while engaging in sexual intercourse too?
Should the OP be leery of attempting to walk WHILE chewing gum ... as if Postmodern intersectionality weren't re-applicable for logically ANDing BOTH together to produce a synergistic Gestalt ... while the sky might fall if compartmentalization and
functional fixedness as psychoPathologic false-sense-of-security-at-ALL-cost -- Sanity and self-education included-- are both preserved?

One editor feature that is absolutely essential, though, is automatic parenthesis matching.

Gene> automatic if not programmatic, perhaps instantiated via one addon package or another.
Some even colorize matching pairs of parentheticals.
But one my find a richer assortment of such packages in GNU emacs than in Edwin.
So if or when one uses BOTH -- as I recommend -- the cognitive dissonance of having a feature available in Emacs may motivate it's user to RE-implement that feature in SCHEME for Edwin, thus creating a Mathetics reinforcement loop of personal motivation.

So take a look at your current editor and see whether it supports it.

Gene> Naw ... keep your current editor, if you even have one -- as you might have been using a word processor -- in the back of your mind and notice the differences as you use new-to-you-at-first editors as you IMERSE yourself in editors which cater and
pander to the language(s) you are attempting to learn.

Sincerely,
Gene

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On Monday, February 22, 2021 at 3:37:44 PM UTC-5, Vincent Manis wrote:

MIT-Scheme isn't currently supported on Windows,

As someone exposed to variants of the Lisp family since my introduction to logo back in the early 80s I'll reveal the lateral thinking which the use of the members of the Lisp family engenders: Windows 10 supports multiple flavors of the ubiquitous
linux-based GNU-infrastructured OS ... all of which DO support not only MIT-scheme and umpteen other varieties used by Aubry Jaffer as the SLIB maintainer whose SCM dialect was the grafting point of ramification for GUILE, but scsh as the Scheme Shell.

So if one WANTS to use scheme in an immersive way one MAY pick a linux flavor running atop Windows 10 -- or a virtual machine -- get scsh and any number of scheme implementations the proceed to have a scheme lovefest.

One editor feature that is absolutely essential, though, is automatic parenthesis matching. So take a look at your current editor and see whether it supports it.

For those sensitive to visual symmetry I'll share a trick the bonehead Pythonistas can't do as per the Procrustean formatting head binding of their non-homoiconic head-binding language a la living proof of the validity of Linguistic Relativity and/or the
Worf-Sapir-Korzybski hypothesis

(
)

That was it.
Pretty anticlimactic, wasn't it?
By placing matched pairs over and under in the same column as their mate it's easy to use right hemispherical visual processing to perform the matching of parentheticals.
The REPL couldn't care less, so it has made sense to me to use this formatting scheme to make it easier on my pattern-recognizing brain to use this pattern feature.
And when all the parentheticals appear on the left side of the page it's easier to find them AND one's code becomes less overly compressed to the point that superficial pussies behold, apperceive, and/or ASSERT as if a canard: Lots-of Inane Silly
Parentheses

In closing, your empathy and application of the scientific method was touching, Vincent.
Exploiting this ethos I'd recommend Launching one's chosen editor from scsh running atop any of the Un*xoid OSes, as well as any number of scheme implementations from the same scsh session.

For anyone opting to use one of the Emacsen as one's editor of choice, I recommend launching multiple scheme REPLS on a one-REPL per buffer basis ... then ALSO using Org-mode to perform repeatable research in scheme via org-mode running atop Emacs
running atop whatever OS one uses to support Emacs.

If you're a modern Windows user, Spacemacs might be your friend.

if you like the Vi/Vim keystrokes of Spacemacs and opt to use org-mode to perform repeatable research of scheme by using scheme source code nested within org-mode src blocks ... you can work-and-play with your smart phone via the org-mobile app

The permutations and combinations for a lateral thinker are myriad and enriching.

I encourage and recommend dabbling and experimenting with them in any configuration they can be rigged together to form a trapeze suitable for any daring young (wo)man.

Cheers!

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