
Programming Algorithms: A Crash Course in Lisp - deepaksurti
http://lisp-univ-etc.blogspot.com/2019/07/crash-course-in-lisp.html
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zshrdlu
> _It is much easier to explain Lisp if we begin from a blank slate._

More so than any other language I know of, Lisp's reputation precedes it.
Everyone seems to know all about Lisp. It's remarkably rare to find people who
genuinely want to explore Lisp the way they do other (newer) languages, with
no preconceptions and biases.

It also seems people do things less and less out of sheer (scholarly)
curiosity these days.

~~~
molteanu
You mean the Greedy Ghost [1] has swallowed up everything in it's path? I
agree. I've almost got my ass kicked on a few interviews for daring to say I
do Lisp in my free time. "Lisp?! What the f __* do you wanna do with thaaat?!
" was more or less the answer that I've received. If it doesn't bring any more
$$$ in your pockets you're just wasting your time.

[1] [https://www.rt.com/op-ed/465466-europe-tourism-greed-
profit/](https://www.rt.com/op-ed/465466-europe-tourism-greed-profit/)

~~~
yogsototh
I earn money for working in Clojure. And I feel it provide a huge advantage.

I do Haskell in my spare time too. Once you’re used to FP, going back to
imperative languages feel like a terrible regression.

~~~
molteanu
I wanna earn money doing FP work, too!

Of course, Common Lisp spoiled me beyond words. I've tried OCaml the other
day. It might be a good language, but I can't seem to make it integrate nicely
with the Emacs workflow that I was used to from Common Lisp. You need ;; at
the end of your expression when in the REPL, but not when building a
standalone app in OCaml. When compiling it's considered bad practice to put ;;
But without it, the REPL doesn't know where the expression ends. Or something
like that, anyway.

Same story with Prolog. It might be a good language, but there are all sorts
of special cases and exceptions when working with it interactively. I've
gotten so much used to working interactively, to have a live, one-on-one
honest conversation with my language and environment that languages without it
seem brain-dead somehow.

I agree with your "terrible regression" comment.

~~~
tom_mellior
Try [https://github.com/triska/ediprolog](https://github.com/triska/ediprolog)
for a great interactive Prolog mode for Emacs. Much better that SLIME (as I
remember it from briefly playing with it ten years ago): There is no notion of
moving code from your edit buffer to a REPL, the code in your edit buffer _is_
your program. Queries are also part of your program (using special comment
syntax) rather than entered in a separate REPL and lost when you close that.

I think Tuareg-mode also makes the OCaml part a lot less painful. It's a bit
unfair to compare Lisp used with tight Emacs integration to OCaml used
seemingly without the corresponding integration.

