Learn Lisp the Hard Way
learnlispthehardway.org
Learn Lisp the Hard Way
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Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way
#2"Is Lisp as hard as people say it is?
No. Lisp is actually the simplest programming language, and has no syntactic cruft. While it wasn't designed to be “easy to learn” like Swift, Python, Ruby, or Basic, there is less overall to learn and you will be writing real, useful programs in Lisp sooner than you could with other languages."
It's like a never-ending stream of lies, every word being a little more absurd than the last...
Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way
#3"Is Lisp as hard as people say it is? No. Lisp is actually the simplest programming language, and has no syntactic cruft. While it wasn't designed to be “easy to learn” like Swift, Python, Ruby, or Basic, there is less overall to learn and you will be writing real, useful programs in Lisp sooner than you could with other languages." It's like a never-ending stream of lies, every word being a little more absurd than t…
Just because Lisp looks foreign doesn't mean that it's harder. The syntax is different, but it is also very simple. If this were untrue, Scheme wouldn't have survived as a teaching language all these years.
Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way
#4"Is Lisp as hard as people say it is? No. Lisp is actually the simplest programming language, and has no syntactic cruft. While it wasn't designed to be “easy to learn” like Swift, Python, Ruby, or Basic, there is less overall to learn and you will be writing real, useful programs in Lisp sooner than you could with other languages." It's like a never-ending stream of lies, every word being a little more absurd than t…
Just because Lisp looks foreign doesn't mean that it's harder. The syntax is different , but it is also very simple . If this were untrue, Scheme wouldn't have survived as a teaching language all these years.
> The biggest secret to Lisp is that it is actually the simplest programming language ever created—and that, coupled with its expressiveness and elegance, is why it is favored exclusively by the best programmers in the world.
But is it?
Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because Lisp looks foreign doesn't mean that it's harder. The syntax is different , but it is also very simple . If this were untrue, Scheme wouldn't have survived as a teaching language all these years.
> The biggest secret to Lisp is that it is actually the simplest programming language ever created—and that, coupled with its expressiveness and elegance, is why it is favored exclusively by the best programmers in the world. But is it?
Sounds like you just got told you're not one of the best programmers in the world and are still in shock about it.
Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way
#6"Is Lisp as hard as people say it is? No. Lisp is actually the simplest programming language, and has no syntactic cruft. While it wasn't designed to be “easy to learn” like Swift, Python, Ruby, or Basic, there is less overall to learn and you will be writing real, useful programs in Lisp sooner than you could with other languages." It's like a never-ending stream of lies, every word being a little more absurd than t…
Just because Lisp looks foreign doesn't mean that it's harder. The syntax is different , but it is also very simple . If this were untrue, Scheme wouldn't have survived as a teaching language all these years.
At first I thought the Dr. Scheme (now Dr. Racket) program was crazy to choose a Lisp like language. Then as I learned more languages I realized how much easier it is to think about programming since I started out with Dr. Scheme.
How To Design Programs for those interested in picking up Scheme: http://htdp.org/
Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way
#7Before asking the obvious question when noticing the "Learn [X] The Hard Way" pattern, the FAQ already addresses that :-)
Q: Is this site affiliated with Zed Shaw and Learn Code The Hard Way?
A: No. This is a separately run and managed site, based on the format of Zed Shaw's LxTHW open-source package [1] for writing your own programming language course. You should check out the project and see what others are up to! More information is available at: Learn Code The Hard Way [2]
Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way
#8"Is Lisp as hard as people say it is? No. Lisp is actually the simplest programming language, and has no syntactic cruft. While it wasn't designed to be “easy to learn” like Swift, Python, Ruby, or Basic, there is less overall to learn and you will be writing real, useful programs in Lisp sooner than you could with other languages." It's like a never-ending stream of lies, every word being a little more absurd than t…
Could you enumerate the lies for us? Your comment is arresting but not enlightening without more information.
Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way
#9"Is Lisp as hard as people say it is? No. Lisp is actually the simplest programming language, and has no syntactic cruft. While it wasn't designed to be “easy to learn” like Swift, Python, Ruby, or Basic, there is less overall to learn and you will be writing real, useful programs in Lisp sooner than you could with other languages." It's like a never-ending stream of lies, every word being a little more absurd than t…
Just because Lisp looks foreign doesn't mean that it's harder. The syntax is different , but it is also very simple . If this were untrue, Scheme wouldn't have survived as a teaching language all these years.
It's less about it being 'foreign' and more about it being totally unparsable.
The thing with imperative programming is that you don't really need to know the language to at least get an idea of what's happening.
Lisp is so dense that while you can pack an unbelievable amount of programming into a small chunk, approaching it as a beginner is daunting. There isn't a really good way to 'build' on an algorithm and learning it is significantly harder than learning C# or Java or even better yet, Python.
It's like saying, 'Linux is easy to learn! You can do so much in so few characters! It's so powerful! And look, robust manual pages for all!'
Yeah, that's true, but handing a user some pipes and greps isn't going to explain what the hell they actually do or better yet, how to leverage that into something useful. It's just going to look like greek to anyone who sees it and a huge effort has to be made to get to the point where you can even begin to understand what's happening.
Imperative programming doesn't ask you of much. 'Here is a class. Here is the main method. Write some stuff in here. Here are some basic methods in the default libraries and their expected inputs. It's going to execute line by line. Go nuts.'
And that's really the difference here. Lisp asks a lot of the user up front. Python doesn't. C# doesn't. Fuck, Python is so loose that you don't even really need to know what any of the structure is to start writing something that kicks back some output. Yeah, as a group that understands Lisp and Scheme and Haskell and F#, it's really easy to say, 'Lisp isn't THAT hard', but that's bullshit. Lisp IS that hard. Lisp is a very difficult language to pickup when you are starting at square one and it's only marginally easier if your background is purely imperative languages. Misrepresenting that is a bold-faced lie.
Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way
#10"The mysterious force driving human society towards the technological singularity, true and total unification of human with technology, also seems to be shaping all programming languages into Lisp, and all computers into Lisp Machines. Lisp, after all, can do everything, and do it every way; that Lisp is not already the de-facto programming language is just a reflection of the state of the world as a whole—only a very small percentage of the population are excited for the technological singularity, but the singularity is coming no matter how much people complain. One way or another, every programmer is going to end up being a Lisper, because every programming language continues to adopt features and syntax from Lisp, one piece at a time. It is in every programmer's interest to master Lisp now, before the world at large realizes how essential Lisp will become over the next two decades."
The title is right, IMO. This is a difficult way to learn Lisp. I'm feeling the burn already.