Racket is explicitly designed as a teaching language and I would highly recommend Beautiful Racket as a starting point.
Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
11–20 of 211 posts
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#12On Lisp by Paul Graham is a good start: http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html Edit: I meant ANSI Common Lisp. Thanks everyone! (I wouldn't even recommend On Lisp as a second text, too much macrology).
I would not start with OnLips it's pretty advanced book on Common Lisp. It's very good book but not for those that just staring out.
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#13Racket Scheme & SICP is a fun way to start playing, especially if you are into theoretical concepts of CS and programming, like higher order programming and abstraction.
The documentation for Racket is excellent, see e.g.
https://docs.racket-lang.org/quick/index.html
... and many people have created online resources to adapt SICP to Racket, as well as other learning texts. I like Beautiful Racket, e.g.
https://beautifulracket.com/explainer/lists.html
You can use #lang sicp and start playing around with the free online reformatted SICP text here:
http://sarabander.github.io/sicp/
I recommend getting a print copy of SICP, though, and working through the examples in a real DrRacket environment on your computer.
IMO, if you end up going deep in the "lispy" direction after playing with Racket, you'll probably be drawn to Clojure as it is the Lisp with the biggest "production use" community at the moment. So long as you can put up with some JVM warts, it, too, will be a good experience.
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#14Why not go through some of the classic lisp programming books like sicp[1] or htdp[2], since both are freely available?
[1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/index.html
[2] https://htdp.org
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#15Is there a good argument against Clojure in this case? My impression is that it's a good lisp and you can get actual work done in it which is an advantage over some of the other options.
One argument I can think of is that if your problem is not shaped in a functional way, then a functional programming language might be a poor fit for the job. Common Lisp is multi-paradigm language that is pretty bendy with regard to absorbing new ways of doing programming. It gets actual work done as well.
How is it that you think Clojure has trouble doing things in a non-functional way? I'm just curious, as I work in Clojure primarily and may have a huge blind spot I'd love to clear out!
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#16I really enjoyed reading 'The Little Schemer' book. It teaches the Scheme language, which is a Lisp-1. It was entertaining due to the novelty of its format.
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#17I asked this in Reddit a while ago and got these answers: https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/iwz36s/list_of_lisp_e...
VSCode will be fine for editing Lisp, there's a good syntax highlighter extension too.
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#18Is there a good argument against Clojure in this case? My impression is that it's a good lisp and you can get actual work done in it which is an advantage over some of the other options.
How is the VSCode support? I've only used IntelliJ + Cursive for Clojure and am quite spoiled. That's the only reason I might not recommend Clojure for a VSCode user. Now, if said user is interested in switching to Emacs or IntelliJ, I'd think it would be a perfect fit.
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#19On Lisp by Paul Graham is a good start: http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html Edit: I meant ANSI Common Lisp. Thanks everyone! (I wouldn't even recommend On Lisp as a second text, too much macrology).
IMHO On Lisp is the best as a 2nd (or 3rd) book, but not the 1st. It really explains why Lisp once you understand the basics.
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#20Since you're a Vim user like me: I've found Emacs Lisp a good way to accidentally learn Lisp!
Like there are many Lisps, there are many Vims. Spacemacs is a Vim for Emacs or inside Emacs: https://www.spacemacs.org/
It's quite powerful. And it can be argued that Emacs is highly extensible - because it's written in a Lisp. Looking under the hood and hacking on the editor is a lot of fun and very informative. And also horrible and bad. But in a good way!
And almost completely unrelated: I very much enjoy the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs book and online lectures: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu...
The video lectures were recorded in 1986!: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu...
And they're still amazing.
(But people all think very differently and what works for me may not be your cup of tea!)