[Pdx-pm] Lisp class, L2 acquisition, Prolog, etc.

[Austin Schutz]

On Mon, May 02, 2005 at 11:32:42AM -0700, Randall Lucas wrote:
> My goodness,
> 
> What a lot of interesting talk this query has elicited.  I put my 
> comments on the tangential issues below.  But the question remains: is 
> there a good institution in Portland where I can find a structured group 
> class on Lisp (or for that matter, Haskell etc.)?  I'm hoping to hear, 
> "oh, call the CS department at OGI" or something of that sort.
> 

	I would suggest contacting the instructors teaching the AI courses
at PSU and OGI and see if they still use Lisp. I would be surprised if they
did, but it wouldn't hurt to ask.
	They used to teach Scheme as part of the curriculum at UO but I'm
not sure they still do, and that's probably out of the way a bit.

	You might also try searching for distance learning.

> Thank you for the suggestion of finding some mentoring, but my 
> motivation in finding a class is partly that I'd like to find some other 
> like minded folks who are in "student" mode -- team building for 
> entrepreneurial ventures among "woker" mode folks has been very 
> frustrating for me, and one of my goals is to assemble my next team.
> 
> As far as Prolog, what on Earth might I use this for?  Graham wrote 
> Yahoo Shopping in Lisp, but would it make sense to write the Next Big 
> Thing in Prolog?  I ultimately would like to beleive in the potential 
> utility of the next language I undertake.
> 

	IIRC there was a slashdot article about this where a yahoo employee
commented about how the lisp stuff was a total mess and they were in the
process of rewriting it.

	While Lisp may be (partially) the foundation for later languages,
there's probably a good reason it's the computer science equivalent to
Latin - which is also still taught at some universities.
	
	That's not meant to be a comment about how useful it is to learn,
however. Latin is very helpful for a deeper understanding of western
linguistics. Or so I hear.

	Austin