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I have to second this. Racket is absolutely the best place to start. There are great books for beginners, and the documentation is top notch.

it comes with its own editor (Dr. Racket) that does some really helpful things for beginners, like hovering over a variable and seeing lines drawn to where it's being used.

It's not the fastest lisp, but that's ok. It's spectacular for learning and has a huge ecosystem too. My "daily driver" is Chicken Scheme, but i wouldn't recommend it to a beginner. The docs just aren't helpful to newbs (and frequently frustrating to me even though it has one of the better set of docs)

Vim is meh for Lisp & Scheme, and I'm a Vim fan. Emacs is great. If you're a Vim user check out Doom Emacs. It's great for us geeks who love vim but want more power and better lisp support. But... start with Dr. Racket for now.

Others have mentioned the SICP book, and it is good but i wouldn't suggest it as as "how to start with lisp" book. Also, watch the free lectures of the course from MIT. Very good, and make it way easier to work through the book.




I'm trying to make the neovim lisp world a little more pleasant with Conjure :) just for those that absolutely can not switch to emacs long term (like me)

https://github.com/Olical/conjure

It's written in a lisp, runs as lua and supports: Clojure, Fennel, Racket and Janet with a bunch more to come.


Vim is meh for Lisp & Scheme, and I'm a Vim fan. Emacs is great. If you're a Vim user check out Doom Emacs.

There is always spacemacs: https://www.spacemacs.org/




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