DescentBB

Has anyone ever used PLT Scheme? Mostly, I just use the DrScheme (or DrRacket, depending on when you downloaded it) IDE to do all my computations without actually making any executable files. Its excellent. Its probably one of the best programming languages out there. I use it while in DLE all the time.

http://racket-lang.org/

I know some scheme, but I find the language to be too verbose and not very expressive. I understand the novelty of the language being lists of lists and how you can use that to write cool macros, but that quality is otherwise responsible for unintuitive syntax that makes the language overly difficult to read and write.

I took a programming course in college that was based on Scheme. I still have nightmares about it. car...cdr...*shudder*

I could see how the syntax can be a pain. But once you get used to it, and assuming you're using the editor that high-lights matching parens, it has great computational potential. Not that other languages don't. Using the IDE on the fly as a make-shift super-calculator is highly convenient too.

I had this one math professor who showed me the DrScheme long ago, and I just learned it over the years. I was so used to Scheme that learning C++ was hard for me.

I think my biggest problem was that the language was entirely built on being recursive, and its syntax seemed abstracted to the point that I had substantial issues in reading what was going on. My previous classroom experience was all in C/C++, and I definitely preferred the more explicit syntax of those.

Have you tried python? It also has the advantages of having an interactive shell, not requiring compiled executables, and being good at math, but it doesn't have the horrible syntax. The horrible syntax of scheme is so that you can write cool macros, but if you're not using that language feature, then you're suffering through it for no reason.

Python also seems to have significantly more employer demand from what I've heard.

I've seen Python, but never really got into it. I know its a good language because the university professors always talked about and used it. But I'm so used to scheme that the syntax doesn't bother me. I don't think its suffering at all.

*edit*
I still wouldn't mind downloading a python interpreter to check it out. Is there one that is a window rather than on the black console screen?