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Learn Lisp the Hard Way

learnlispthehardway.org

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Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way

#51

Post by nmrm »

kazinator wrote: post #36
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, let's see. Lisp has no syntactic cruft? It has (almost) no syntax, so there's less room for cruft. That said... cons? car? cdr? That's your syntax? That's not cruft? Seriously? There may be less total cruft, but the percentage of cruft might still be higher... There's less overall to learn? If you mean to master the syntax, sure, that's true. You'll be writing real, useful programs in Lisp sooner than you could…

I believe that Lisp requires years to master. If you're a bright developer, who puts in time eagerly, it will take at least six months before you begin to "get it". At that time you may start itching to evangelize to others, but those who have not put in the time will not get it. It's not realistic to try to make someone see in one or two e-mails or postings what took you a year to see for yourself.

I think the whole enlightenment thing w.r.t. lisp is overblown.

Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way

#52

Post by steveklabnik »

Udo wrote: post #35

" 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. " As a transhumanist myself I resent the arrogance that led to this ridiculous appropriation. Yes, Lisp is pretty great, but the use of other…

I love various Lisps, but I've always enjoyed http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-m... :

    > 1958 - John McCarthy and Paul Graham invent LISP. Due to high costs
    > caused by a post-war depletion of the strategic parentheses reserve LISP
    > never becomes popular[1]. In spite of its lack of popularity, LISP (now
    > "Lisp" or sometimes "Arc") remains an influential language in "key
    > algorithmic techniques such as recursion and condescension"[2].

Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way

#53

Post by Kluny »

andrewstuart wrote: post #11
jschulenklopper wrote: post #7

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.

Because Zed made it open source to encourage other people to use it, and because he laid excellent groundwork so it's a good format to follow.

Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way

#55

Post by fisher-lebo »

PuercoPop wrote: post #44
tormeh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parsable for humans, I believe he meant. And there's something nice about line-by-line execution.

Wrong either way. Because it is so easy to parse by computers it is easy to use them to format it. Have you tried reading foreign (as in not written by anyone you know) lisp code? IME It is not hard(er) than any other language. For example, IME delving into the codebase of hunchentoot was way easier than django's.

All of this stuff is subjective. I've coded Python for some time, and I've done an entire project in Clojure.

Because I've done more Python working, reading Django's source is much easier for me than most Clojure code (even my own), but that's not to say the same for everyone else.

These are after all languages (even if they are artificial). The human brain is really good at understanding a wide variety of linguistic constructs, the main issue is familiarity and that changes from person to person.

Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way

#56

Post by steveklabnik »

andrewstuart wrote: post #11
jschulenklopper wrote: post #7

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 explicitly said this was okay. https://web.archive.org/web/20120124120726/http://sheddingbi...

Also, read the README: https://gitorious.org/learn-x-the-hard-way/learn-x-the-hard-...

Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way

#57

Post by andrewstuart »

ambiate wrote: post #17
andrewstuart wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why copy his format? Seems Zed did the hard work to establish the brand.

Why would he put up a public repository if he did not want the format copied? 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"...

Probably the polite thing to do would be to check with Zed first. Maybe the author already did.

Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way

#58

Post by gaigepr »

gre wrote: post #49
wes-exp wrote: post #3

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.

The DSL for string formatting certainly doesn't look simple. (format t "~{~@(~A~)~^ ~}, because ~{~A~^ ~} is easier!" llthw (cddr llthw))

I am only recently a lisp user but honestly, how is the format function far from:

printf("something %s then %d finally %f!", "asd", 1, 1.2)

As mentioned, there is a loop built into format. Since lisp also has a (list) function eg: (list 'a 'b 'c 1) I still don't see an argument beyond familiarity with the C style printf syntax for why format is bad/unreadable.

Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way

#59

Post by mcosta »

gre wrote: post #49
wes-exp wrote: post #3

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.

The DSL for string formatting certainly doesn't look simple. (format t "~{~@(~A~)~^ ~}, because ~{~A~^ ~} is easier!" llthw (cddr llthw))

I do not understant it, but with changing ~ with % I can imagine what it does.

Re: Learn Lisp the Hard Way

#60

Post by andrewstuart »

steveklabnik wrote: post #56
andrewstuart wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why copy his format? Seems Zed did the hard work to establish the brand.

Zed explicitly said this was okay. https://web.archive.org/web/20120124120726/http://sheddingbi... Also, read the README: https://gitorious.org/learn-x-the-hard-way/learn-x-the-hard-...

Seems a little ambiguous to me. His wording seems to me to be about how to write a "similar book". Anyway Zed is here on HN from time to time so we might hear what he thinks.
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