One student session will be held every Wednesday from XX-YY at WHERE.
-->
-## [[Jump to content (lecture notes and more)|content]] ##
+## [[Index of Content (lecture notes and more)|content]] ##
## Announcements ##
[[Advanced notes|topics/week1 advanced notes]]
+<!--
+[[Lambda Evaluator]]: Usable in your browser. It can help you check whether your answer to some of the homework questions works correctly. There is also now a [library](/lambda_library) of lambda-calculus arithmetical and list operations, some relatively advanced.
+
+We've added a [[Monad Library]] for OCaml.
+We've posted a [[State Monad Tutorial]].
+-->
+
+
## Course Overview ##
The overarching goal of this seminar is to introduce concepts and techniques from
understanding of them to recognize them in use, use them yourself at least
in simple ways, and to be able to read more about them when appropriate.
-[[More about the topics and larger themes of the course| overview]]
+[[More about the topics and larger themes of the course|overview]]
## Who Can Participate? ##
and that is what we recommend you use. If you're already using or comfortable with
another Scheme implementation, though, there's no compelling reason to switch.
- <!-- Racket doesn't have R7RS-small, and won't anytime soon. :-( Perhaps prefer Chicken? -->
+ Another good Scheme implementation is Chicken. For our purposes, this is in some
+respects superior to Racket, and in other respects inferior. <!--
+Racket doesn't have R7RS-small, and won't anytime soon. :-(
+Also Chicken's library collection seems stronger, or at least better organized and maintained.
+Other R7RS-friendly: [Gauche](http://practical-scheme.net/gauche), [Chibi](https://code.google.com/p/chibi-scheme).
+-->
- Racket stands to Scheme in something like the relation Firefox stands to HTML.
+ Racket and Chicken stand to Scheme in something like the relation Firefox stands to HTML.
- (Wikipedia on [Lisp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_%28programming_language%29),
+ (Wikipedia on
+[Lisp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_%28programming_language%29),
[Scheme](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheme_%28programming_language%29),
-and [Racket](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_%28programming_language%29).)
+[Racket](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_%28programming_language%29), and
+[Chicken](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHICKEN_%28Scheme_implementation%29).)
* **Caml** is one of two major dialects of *ML*, which is another large
family of programming languages. Caml has only one active "implementation",
more generally; but you can assume that what we're talking about always works more
specifically in OCaml.
- (Wikipedia on [ML](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ML_%28programming_language%29),
-[Caml](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caml),
-and [OCaml](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCaml).)
+ (Wikipedia on
+[ML](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ML_%28programming_language%29),
+[Caml](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caml), and
+[OCaml](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCaml).)
-* Those of you with some programming background may have encountered a third
-prominent functional programming language, **Haskell**. This is also used a
+* **Haskell** is also used a
lot in the academic contexts we'll be working through. Its surface syntax
differs from Caml, and there are various important things one can do in
each of Haskell and Caml that one can't (or can't as easily) do in the
familiar with one of them, it's generally not hard to move between it and the
other.
- (Wikipedia on [Haskell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_%28programming_language%29).)
+ Like Scheme, Haskell has a couple of different implementations. The
+dominant one, and the one we recommend you install, is called GHC, short
+for "Glasgow Haskell Compiler".
+
+ (Wikipedia on
+[Haskell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_%28programming_language%29) and
+[GHC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Haskell_Compiler).)
<a name=installing></a>