
Chunky Bacon in the Land of Lisp - QuarkSpark
http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/programming/chunky-bacon-lisp/
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crazydiamond
I am a rubyist who has wanted to learn lisp. However, the plethora of lisps
has made this choice difficult with people advising to start with one lisp
(scheme, iirc) and then move over to lisp.

Could you tell me which lisp you are using? IIRC, there's SBCL and various
others. Thanks for putting down the resources you are reading. Have you
considered clojure or other alternatives? How did you decide on CL ?

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nonrecursive
I started with CL because I started learning lisp through the excellent book
"Land of Lisp". However, I've since moved to Clojure, which I would recommend
over CL. The main reason is that you can do more with Clojure. The packaging
system is a lot easier to deal with, and you have a lot more at your disposal
through your access to Java libraries. Another good reason is that Clojure is
just more pleasant to deal with than CL. For example, there are many CL
implementations and dealing with their differences is a pain in the ass. With
Clojure, you have a lot more good ideas baked right into the language.

I hope this helps!

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crazydiamond
Thanks, I have a Java background, so that should help. However, from what I
recall many of the articles on learning Clojure recommended learning
Lisp/Scheme first. Do you agree?

Also, they strongly recommended learning Emacs (I have been a Vim'mer for
about 20 years, and I like keeping my Vim simple with only a few plugins).

Does one just jump into Clojure or how do you recommend it? If lisp/scheme
first, then which one? Thx.

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nonrecursive
It's hard for me to really say, but at the least I can talk about my own
experience. I began learning Common Lisp by going through "Land of Lisp" by
Conrad Barski, and because it was so fun it really helped to keep me motivated
while learning such a different way of programming. The book was also useful
in that you learned through writing short programs which actually did
something, which I found to be a great teaching style. I mean, I really,
really loved going through that book.

As far as I know, there are no comparable books for Clojure. However, once I
became familiar with CL, it was not at all difficult to pick up Clojure. Sure,
Clojure has some new ideas, especially when it comes to mutability and
concurrency. But in terms of the basic language, it's very similar to CL and
in many ways it's easier to work with.

As for emacs - I also strongly recommend using it. It has great support for
lisp and really makes development a joy. Emacs itself is written in a lisp
variant, elisp. If you do decide to go with emacs, use this:
<https://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit> . It's a great set of
packages pulled together by someone who, it turns out, is very big in the
Clojure community. I'm not really sure what the best resource is for learning
emacs these days.

I've really enjoyed the way I've learned lisp, and I feel comfortable
recommending that you start with Land of Lisp and emacs. I hope this helps!

