11–20 of 144 posts
Before 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!…
Before 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!…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Earlier 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.
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 learn…
"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.
There isn't any syntactic cruft in Lisp that will have you scratching your head as to what goes with what.
There are semantic head-scratchers related to syntax, like working out the implied actions of complicated, nested backquotes. There is never a question of syntax, though: nested backquotes are not ambiguous syntactically: they are just nested lists, with some sprinkling of a simple prefix-based notation throughout (splices and unquotes).
Before 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!…
Why copy his format? Seems Zed did the hard work to establish the brand.
Zed A. Shaw created project Learn X The Hard Way 2011-08-29 22:06:48 UTC This is a skeleton book project that makes it easier to start working on a "Learn X The Hard Way"...
Earlier 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.
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 learn…
"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.
Lisp is a difficult language due to it's density and unreadability.
Useful stuff hasn't been built in functional languages until very recently, exception being some AI. Haskell and friends are making functional languages cool and useful (and that's great!) but if you want to build something useful as soon as possible, learn .NET, Java, Python or Ruby.