I worked my way through Land of Lisp a few years ago and had a good time with it. I had already done some Lisp programming before, but I learned a bunch from Land of Lisp and had fun in the process.
Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
111–120 of 211 posts
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#112How to Design Programs, Second Edition
https://htdp.org/2020-8-1/Book/index.html
It's a good introduction to programming in general and uses a series of "student language" dialects of Racket, which is in the Scheme/Lisp family.
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#113Racket 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://beauti…
Can I read SICP while learning Clojure? Is lisp very different?
I wouldn't, unless you already know Scheme well. Otherwise, you're essentially learning two programming languages at once, and you won't know if your mistakes are because you misunderstand Scheme, Clojure, or both.
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#114Scheme or Clojure. Get The Little Schemer book.
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#115First you have to choose your flavor. If you want to use JVM, probably clojure. Otherwise Scheme, Common Lisp and Racket. Scheme is rather minimalistic, Common Lisp is very functional and Racket is the most modern one I guess. I ended up with Common Lisp and I rather don't look for change. SBCL is implementation I use and like it. Probably the best one and quite portable. Emacs seems the best choice for Lisp, since i…
> Lisp is very functional
just to point out i believe 'functional' here means 'has lots of functionality' not 'more suited to functional programming' - in that regard scheme (and racket) are more 'functional' than CL
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#116Books -ANSI Common Lisp by Paul Graham -On Lisp by Paul Graham -Simply Scheme -The Little Schemer -Structure And Interpretation Of Computer Programs -Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming Implementations Common Lisp - any should be fine, I’ve used sbcl and clisp Scheme - I like gambit scheme. It has a macro system that can be used like described in “On Lisp”
The Hacker News Paul Graham?
He wrote his first product (Viaweb) in lisp and sold it to Yahoo!. (If a name has an exclamation and it's the last word in a sentence, do I follow it with a period like normal to avoid seeming overly enthusiastic?)
He wrote two books on Common Lisp and has his own Lisp reading list: http://www.paulgraham.com/booklinks.html. There's also, one level higher, a set of lisp links: http://www.paulgraham.com/lisplinks.html
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#117A whole lot of answers but very few questions - most importantly "Why do you want to learn Lisp?"
Are you new to functional programming and have heard that's the parent language? Do you know a statically typed functional language and want to learn a dynamically typed? Are you looking for something practical you can interop easily with other languages with? Are you looking for a good language to follow SICP with? Do you already know scheme but want to learn a true lisp?
Depending on the reason why there are lots of different recommendations. For example If you know Java, and want a more practical language with modern library support from the lisp family someone may actually say Clojure is the best choice for you. But if you know scheme and are wanting to learn an actual lisp, then that wouldn't match your needs.
Always be wary of people telling you what you should do without them knowing why you want to do it. Not because they don't mean well, but because the only way they can answer is by projecting their own reason "why" onto you - which in most cases isn't applicable.
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#118I remember wanting to learn lisp. I got stuck and reached out to the community for help.
And found them to be very hostile.
I decided I had better things to do with my time.
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I feel like I'm in the minority in that I prefer to NOT learn things by just "diving in". I am much more successful when I start from the absolute fundamentals. A bit more off-topic, but this resonated with me. I too feel more comfortable when I start with the absolute fundamentals. When something does not work, knowing the fundamentals helps me to reason about why it does not work from the first principles. On sim…
Exactly. Though, to be fair, if someone says they want to learn LISP and then you tell them to learn Emacs... well, now they have TWO problems! xD I love and use Emacs. And I also, unsurprisingly, don't like or recommend that people start off with all of these "starter packs". But at the same time, if you don't already know Emacs and you want to learn LISP, I don't know what I'd recommend.
For Clojure, VSCode with the Calva and clj-kondo extensions installed is a pretty good, free starting point.
Also, if you are used to the Jetbrains tools like IntelliJ, try the Cursive IDE (paid).
Re: Ask HN: I want to start learning Lisp. Where do I begin?
#120Is 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.
I tried Clojure a bit and, compared to CL, I find it bloated :S Installing a library takes ages, a lot of memory, and I can't do it from the REPL (so I must quit my development environment, and start it again). CL feels very snappy. I can even install a new library to a running web app. I know it's dangerous, but it works and it helped me already :)
yes but clojure can get you a job