Re: Several questions concerning scheme-music-function

[Robert Schmaus]

Am 27.05.18 um 12:09 schrieb David Kastrup:
> Robert Schmaus <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > Thanks Aaron,
> >
> > it's rather on-topic I guess. Or rather: I'm afraid.
> >
> > In your first link, there's a sample chapter of "The Little Schemer"
> > available. You'd think that they would put something up that's
> > acutally helpful at getting the idea of Scheme and/or that book. And
> > maybe that even was their intention! But ... can you make any sense of
> > this?
> >
> > http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTLS/sample.pdf
> >
> > I certainly can't.
>
> That doesn't make a statement about Scheme, just like dadaism does not
> make a statement about mathematical logic.

No you're right. It makes a statement about that book. Somehow this 
seems to serve as a sort of advertisement for it. I don't get it, but it 
could just be me.


> > I guess my problem is: Scheme seems to be a very nice intellectual
> > exercise. I'm sure it's very elegant and - ultimately - very powerful
> > (as I can see in the snippet repository)
>
> That's not really related.  Scheme is more a way of expressing things
> than a way of doing things: the actual work (which would be described as
> "powerful") is the business of the application-specific primitives.
>
> Powerful snippets just mean that extensive functionality has been made
> accessible via Scheme.  Scheme brings comparatively little baggage of
> its own (well, concerning early iterations of the language) so it ties
> reasonably nicely into larger systems.

Ok, understood.

> > Now, I can live with that - most of the times I don't have to
> > customise anything anyway. It's just, that with Scheme, I know, I'll
> > never get into it, too.
>
> Do you have that attitude towards playing an instrument as well?

That depends. I'd love to play the piano, I have to confess. (I play 
double bass and occasionally electric bass too). I'd love to play many 
instruments, to be honest.
And I did play with the idea of learning the piano as well. But I 
decided against it, because I'm only an amateur musician, I work for a 
living (I write code 4 days a week, 1 day I reserved for myself and 
musical stuff). I will not have the time to concentrate on both, the 
piano and my main instrument, which means I would end up doing two 
things okayish but not really good. Keeping my level and getting better 
on the bass is more important for me.

The analogy is probably not perfect because investing time in Scheme 
would benefit my overall Lilypond abilities, I guess.


> > Ok, thanks again for the references. I think for now, I simply stay
> > within the "out of the box" Lilypond limits. I'd have to invest hours
> > of learning Scheme - that's not an option for the near future, I'm
> > afraid.
>
> It's usually a distributed investment.  You get some things done, then
> some more things.  Scheme is not as far away in LilyPond as, say, Lua is
> in LuaTeX.  It's much more integrated so it doesn't take a leap into a
> distant world.

Thanks - your mail actually does make me want to give it another go. 
Urs's resources will sure help me too.

Best,
Robert