Course Resources CS 3540 Programming Languages and Paradigms

Language References

I maintain a course Frequently Asked Questions List for questions about Racket, Scheme, and the tools we use.

The Racket team has produced a lot of great documentation. Two of their documents are especially helpful to us in this course:

• The Racket Guide, which is one of our course texts.
• DrRacket: The Racket Programming Environment, with lots of information on the IDE we use this semester.

Racket is a fork of the smaller language, Scheme, and retains its basic mindset. There are a number of wonderful books about Scheme available on-line for free:

• R6RS, the latest Scheme standard -- jump right to the table of contents to look up specific topics
• The Scheme Programming Language, by Kent Dybvig -- a thorough introduction with some tutorial material and few cool examples (offline)
• Teach Yourself Scheme in Fixnum Days -- a tutorial for experienced programmers

The creators of Racket have also written How to Design Programs, a CS1 textbook that uses Racket to teach program design.

Language Interpreters

Dr. Racket is the standard IDE for the Racket language. It is all you need for working with Racket, and I encourage you to use it for your studying and your programming assignments this semester. It comes not only with a graphical IDE but also a suite of command-line tools.

Dr. Racket is installed on the machines in the CS labs (335 ITTC, 112 WRT, and 339 WRT). You can download it for your own computers. It runs on all major platforms and is a snap to install. You will be surprised what all Dr. Racket offers!

Here are some free Scheme interpreters:

• Gambit, a portable and efficient interpreter
• Bigloo, which supports system-level programming
• JScheme, which runs on the JVM and interoperates with Java
• Chez Scheme, a professional-quality interpreter (offline)
• http://www.schemers.org/ -- maintains a list of most known implementations

I maintain a page of helpful hints for using Dr. Racket. Send me any questions or suggestions you have.

Language Goodies

• on recursive programmming
  • The Little Schemer, by Daniel Friedman and Matthias Felleisen

    The Little Schemer uses an unusual question-and-answer format to help you to think and program in a new style. It's well worth a few dollars. Some people really like this format. If you are one of them, then take a look at The Seasoned Schemer, also by Friedman and Felleisen.

• on programmming languages
  • Computer Languages Timeline -- with many, many language links


• on Scheme
  • Schemers.org -- for all sorts of Scheme goodies


• on Lisp
  • The History of Lisp -- all kinds of good stuff


• on functional programmming


• on other functional programmming languages


• Racket and functional programmming in the "real world"
  • Chromosonia, an installation piece at Ars Electronica -- with a short video

Academic Support

• The Learning Center

  All UNI students are encouraged to take advantage of The Learning Center @ Rod Library (TLC) for assistance with writing, math, science, learning and study strategies, as well as other specific content areas. All Learning Center services are free to currently enrolled UNI students.
  
  Located on the main floor of Rod Library, TLC hours are 10:00am to 10:00pm Monday through Thursday. Students are welcome to stop in for immediate assistance or schedule an appointment. TLC tutors and coaches are available to meet with students in-person at Rod Library or via Zoom.
  
  For more information, go to https://tlc.uni.edu/, email TheLearningCenter@uni.edu, call 319-273-6023, or visit the TLC desk located on the main floor of Rod Library.