Re: [q-lang-users] Just starting with Q

[Burton S. <kr...@gm...>]

On 8/24/06, Albert Graef <Dr....@t-...> wrote:
> Burton Samograd wrote:
> > Thanks for the very informative response to my newbie problems :)
>
> No problem. In fact those newbie questions are valuable input for the
> book about Q that I'm writing. I really have to add a "common pitfalls"
> chapter to the book where I describe the usual suspects and how to deal
> with them, and it's nice to have a ml archive which I can harvest for
> that. :) So keep the newbie questions coming.

Ok then, I shall ask without worry :)

> > 3 shows this week, work and remix contests
>
> Are you a musician? Q has quite a bit of stuff to offer there. Together
> with two colleagues, I'll be giving a talk on some of these interfaces
> at ICMC 2006 in New Orleans.

Music is one of the forms of art that I do that is getting the most
attention lately, although I also do visual art, writing, and whatever
else to keep myself busy.  The easiest way to hear my music is through
MySpace (see below in my signature), which I update pretty regularly
with a rotation of songs, and if you google me (kruhft or burton
samograd) you can find more of my music scattered about the 'net, and
if you don't have time for that, I could just send you some links off
list where you can download it from me since you're helping me out
with learning Q :)

One of the reasons I'm learning Q is because of the work you put in
integrating the audio/image libraries that are included.  I've worked
with many different types of audio programing sytems, and they are all
very capable, but I'm very much into 'interactive' and exploratory
programming and most styems really lack any sort of suitable shell
interface, which Q very capable provides and in a novel and very
useful way.  I've also been studying high level programming languages
for the past five years or so and would say that I know the current
state of the art feature set pretty well and 'know what I want from a
language' and you hit the nail on the head with Q, at least from what
I've read in the manual and the papers you've provided.

Basically, it looks like I've found exactly what I've been looking
for, so now I better put in the time to learn it :)

> > so I'm glad that one finally exists that isn't
> > putting kid gloves on me (Python), or concrete shoes (Haskell) and
> > let's one 'hack' like you're supposed to :D
>
> Yes, Q's certainly intended as a hacker's tool, in Paul Graham's sense.
> I love hacking away on problems, developing stuff from the bottom up,
> and IMHO Q supports that style fairly well.

Yes, hacker in the original, Lispy, working with data and code in a
natural sense sort of way, which is the way that my style went after
breaking the shackles of industrial programming (aka corporate and
production).  I write code to get the computer to do things for me,
not programs per se, and a combo shell/high level langauge is going to
open up new things that bash never could, and C was too tedious for
(even with the meta programming system that I came up with).

Ok, back to hacking so I can screw up and ask some more questions :)

-- 
burton samograd                                                kr...@gm...
kruhft.boldlygoingnowhere.org              www.myspace.com/kruhft