Brandon wrote:
Anyone interested in teaching Lisp?
Not for $0.
Think bigger! Who said anything about not getting paid? It's easy enough to get a course into the UW Experimental College or via one of the community colleges. (SCCC is taking applications for Winter session.) I was actually hoping that we might tap a grad student or professor who might be interested in offering a course outside the normal computer science curriculum but not diluted, either. It can and should be separate from a "users' group" structure.
Nobody learns anything in 30 minutes.
For picking up something like an entire language, I agree. For incremental tweaking of one's knowledge such as picking up an alternative approach or finding a new library, 30 can be enough.
Nor does anyone learn anything in 2 days.
I disagree with the blanket condemnation. Immersion-- even a brief two day series of workshops-- has its place for /some/ people. Perhaps it's just not for you. Likewise, some learn best in classrooms while others find that "spoon-fed" knowledge just doesn't work for them. I've taken the discussion of a seminar/workshop to the Gardeners list last night, so we'll see what comes of that.
... I think we have to motivate people to learn on their own, and provide them resources that help them do that. ...
People have to motivate themselves-- you know, "you can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink" and all that. Having used Lisp in the past, I know that it's a steep two year learning curve for Common Lisp. That's two solid years of progressive use and before crossing-over for it becoming one's principal language. Many just want to take the blue pill, jack in and download knowledge-- sorry, try again! As far as resources are concerned, there are enough out there for people to learn; of course, *finding* anything easily is the biggest problem, and quality could be improved. ...And that takes us back to comments last month on this list: build a "one stop shopping" portal web site for lisp, do something useful with the Lisp Questionnaire, etc. However, the Gardeners are addressing those types of larger issues; participation encouraged: http://www.lispniks.com/cl-gardeners/ Plus, several individuals are adding to the collection of Lisp movies. http://www.cliki.net/Lisp%20Videos Where does that leave us? What need would we fill that isn't already addressed elsewhere? -Daniel