(= Lisp EVILL) -> true

[njordsifusansoo]

Did I ever mention how annoying it is to be assumed to know Lisp proficiently after less than a quarter of a semester of Scheme (good old cse 240 with its 4 paradigms in 1 semester). You see this project for my AI class would not be so annoying if it wasn't for the fact I am only familiar with Lisp. You know, being able to write basic math type and recursive functions familiar (all we really learned to do in cse 240). It also doesn't help that the help files explain most things with language specific terms (which are mostly defined with other language specific terms).
To say the least I spent what 4-5 hours just figuring out how to read in a test file for the project. I have never done I/O in Lisp ever before, so was O so fun figuring out how to set up a stream, read from it and figure out what I read.
Basically, I spent all that time getting to a point where I could really start on the project (which is implementing some search algorithms). Hopefully what the teacher said about the first one taking 30 or so minutes, and the other ones taking even less time was true since I need sleep since I have a full day tomorrow (have a meeting at 9 and don't get done with class till 6). O well, off to code these search algorithms then do the report thing tomorrow.

Comments

[thesawg.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes it is. I suffered the same fate last semester. One LISP primer program and two projects. At no point in the semester did it every really click. I spend most of the time on the first project just getting it to read input and then output. That's pretty much all I turned in. The second project I was doing better, I read, set up data structures, ran through some code that looked like it might do the core functionality, but didn't and then output. So, I turned that one in not working.

But, there is some good news. Depending on your professor, you can take that hit from the projects. I got under 60% on BOTH projects, which was a total 30% of the class. None of them worked or even came close to working. I still got a B in the class.

[thesawg.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, here is a tip that helped me a lot. Style doesn't count.

Abuse the hell out of setq (global variables) and let (local variables) as well as progn. You can make some pretty normal looking C-ish code. None of that functional programming crap.

[njordsifusansoo.livejournal.com]

well if I am only 1 day late I only loose 1% (as in if its worth 15% of my grade in the class, that means the best i can get is 14/15).