First thing is to get rid of the syntax feeling unfamiliar. As a beginner, you need 3-4 chapters of a book for this. As an experienced dev, what you need is an

First thing is to get rid of the syntax feeling unfamiliar. As a beginner, you need 3-4 chapters of a book for this. As an experienced dev, what you need is an overview, a cheatsheet, and reference docs. I think you can get an overview from the Wikipedia on S-expressions[1], then there's Dylan cheatsheet[2] which translates Scheme syntax into equivalent forms in a language with more "normal" (infix) syntax, which also happens to be object oriented, so it should feel quite familiar(EDIT: thinking about it some more, maybe Dylan is still a bit too far from Algol-like syntax, but I can't find such right now). Then, there's Racket cheatsheet[3], and the Racket Tutorial[4]. After writing some Hello Worlds and getting familiar with the syntax, start branching into interesting libraries (like plot, pict; see the list on [5] or search on [6]). See `raco pkg` docs[7] for installing additional libs. Advice about editor: find an S-exp support plugin for your editor and just go with that until you want some graphics support, in which case try DrRacket. Advice about weird things: try not to focus on weird things which are historical incidents - you can learn why CAR and CDR are called that way later, just remember that they are first/rest operations on lists. After this I think Beautiful Racket along with the rest of the Racket docs should be enough to learn most of it. You can also skim How to Design Programs (linked at the end of tutorial) for intro to contracts. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-expression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-expression [2] https://opendylan.org/documentation/cheatsheets/scheme.html#syntax https://opendylan.org/documentation/cheatsheets/scheme.html#... [3] https://docs.racket-lang.org/racket-cheat/index.html https://docs.racket-lang.org/racket-cheat/index.html [4] https://docs.racket-lang.org/quick/index.html https://docs.racket-lang.org/quick/index.html [5] https://docs.racket-lang.org/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/ [6] http://pkgs.racket-lang.org/ http://pkgs.racket-lang.org/ [7] https://docs.racket-lang.org/raco/index.html https://docs.racket-lang.org/raco/index.html