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Previous discussion can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8206038 Have noticed quite a bit more buzz about Racket and Lisp very recently around here. It's always been something I mean to explore.
I think it's because of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9220468
I think the hardest thing for people to get for programming in Lisp is the immutability. Once you get over that hump, everything is downhill. From the outside, the parenthesis seem pedantic but it's completely superficial. You will stop noticing them in a few hours, if not days.
Are you perhaps coming from a Clojure perspective? Scheme is no more inherently immutable than, say, JavaScript. Many Scheme programs I've seen use mutation quite liberally. Immutability is a useful pattern in lots of languages and situations, but Lisp per se doesn't particularly enforce it.
I think the hardest thing for people to get for programming in Lisp is the immutability. Once you get over that hump, everything is downhill. From the outside, the parenthesis seem pedantic but it's completely superficial. You will stop noticing them in a few hours, if not days.
Are you perhaps coming from a Clojure perspective? Scheme is no more inherently immutable than, say, JavaScript. Many Scheme programs I've seen use mutation quite liberally. Immutability is a useful pattern in lots of languages and situations, but Lisp per se doesn't particularly enforce it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you perhaps coming from a Clojure perspective? Scheme is no more inherently immutable than, say, JavaScript. Many Scheme programs I've seen use mutation quite liberally. Immutability is a useful pattern in lots of languages and situations, but Lisp per se doesn't particularly enforce it.
Indeed. Common Lisp is similar with regard to the proliferation of mutation.
(setf (char (symbol-name nil) 1) #\U)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you perhaps coming from a Clojure perspective? Scheme is no more inherently immutable than, say, JavaScript. Many Scheme programs I've seen use mutation quite liberally. Immutability is a useful pattern in lots of languages and situations, but Lisp per se doesn't particularly enforce it.
Racket also defaults to immutable cons and you have to require set-car! and friends. But I agree, most Lisps do not impose/favor immutability
And also, last time I looked at Racket, it seemed very focused on academics. I just wanted to write some simple Scheme in a .scm file and try it out (a script), but I think I had to choose a language first (maybe a line at the top of the file? Don't recall) --- the Racket ecosystem seemed off-putting.
What is a good resource to learn Lisp for an advanced (non Lisp) programmer? Most guides for most languages only cover declaration, simple functions and tiny applications. I want something that quickly goes through the basics and skips to advanced uses in bigger codebases.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. Common Lisp is similar with regard to the proliferation of mutation.
It in fact takes it to amusing extremes, allowing you to mutate even the strings associated with symbols. (setf (char (symbol-name nil) 1) #\U) (Though I guess that could be taken as being the same thing as doing nonsensical pointer arithmetic in C -- you simply should know better.)