4 ms·

I want to give Common Lisp a try. My previous experience with Lisp (any variant) is almost nil. Would this be a good book to start with?

by elteto 7y ago

lanternslight 7y ago
Try Practical Common Lisp or Land of Lisp instead. They are both much more accessible. Then read ACL.
- dreamcompiler 7y ago
  Agreed. Read Graham's books after you're somewhat comfortable with the language, to learn advanced techniques. Norvig's books on Common Lisp are also a good place to start.
- jgalt212 7y ago
  Seconded, Practical Common Lisp was instrumental getting me to think in a sound modular fashion.
Mugwort 7y ago
Get a copy of Racket, take notes, type in the programs for yourself, experiment. This video is the best most direct introduction I have yet found. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5p8DPbaokE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5p8DPbaokE Learning Lisp, Scheme or Clojure is more about learning ideas than anything else. Later you might want to learn Alonzo Church's Lambda calculus after learning some set theory and mathematical logic.
- dreamcompiler 7y ago
  Racket is not Common Lisp. It's not a bad idea to learn it, but the questioner specifically asked about Common Lisp.
zelly 7y ago
Practical Common Lisp (first few chapters) do a toy project read a lot of old Common Lisp code floating around on tarballs then read Paul Graham's books
- slim 7y ago
  I would be grateful if you could provide a link to the tarballs
  - lispm 7y ago
    Old tarballs? Really? Well, here: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/lisp/0.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/... and some of the software here: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/areas/0.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/areas... But some of that has newer versions in the usual repositories.
  - zelly 7y ago
    ftp://ftp.ai.mit.edu/pub/ http://www.norvig.com/paip/ http://www.norvig.com/paip/ Have fun
superdisk 7y ago
Skip CL for now, and use Clojure or Racket. CL's ecosystem requires some hacking to make it work pretty often, and the only true editor for it is Emacs and Slime, so it's not a great out of the box experience. Racket comes with an editor and a ton of libraries, so I'd recommend checking that out first (and then coming back to CL later maybe)
register 7y ago
I believe that the absolute shortest way to start with Lisp for somebody that is already familiar with programming is Franz Inc course that is freely avaialable online here: https://franz.com/services/classes/ https://franz.com/services/classes/. It goes straight to the point and has exercises. Practical Common Lisp is a good book but takes a too long route to get to the point. I would recommend it only to somebody that is not a programmer by trade.

I want to give Common Lisp a try. My previous experience with Lisp (any variant) is almost nil. Would this be a good book to start with?

by elteto 7y ago

I want to give Common Lisp a try. My previous experience with Lisp (any variant) is almost nil. Would this be a good book to start with?

lanternslight 7y ago

Try Practical Common Lisp or Land of Lisp instead. They are both much more accessible. Then read ACL.

dreamcompiler 7y ago
Agreed. Read Graham's books after you're somewhat comfortable with the language, to learn advanced techniques. Norvig's books on Common Lisp are also a good place to start.
jgalt212 7y ago
Seconded, Practical Common Lisp was instrumental getting me to think in a sound modular fashion.

Mugwort 7y ago

Get a copy of Racket, take notes, type in the programs for yourself, experiment. This video is the best most direct introduction I have yet found. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5p8DPbaokE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5p8DPbaokE Learning Lisp, Scheme or Clojure is more about learning ideas than anything else. Later you might want to learn Alonzo Church's Lambda calculus after learning some set theory and mathematical logic.

dreamcompiler 7y ago
Racket is not Common Lisp. It's not a bad idea to learn it, but the questioner specifically asked about Common Lisp.

zelly 7y ago

Practical Common Lisp (first few chapters) do a toy project read a lot of old Common Lisp code floating around on tarballs then read Paul Graham's books

slim 7y ago
I would be grateful if you could provide a link to the tarballs
- lispm 7y ago
  Old tarballs? Really? Well, here: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/lisp/0.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/... and some of the software here: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/areas/0.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/areas... But some of that has newer versions in the usual repositories.
- zelly 7y ago
  ftp://ftp.ai.mit.edu/pub/ http://www.norvig.com/paip/ http://www.norvig.com/paip/ Have fun

superdisk 7y ago

Skip CL for now, and use Clojure or Racket. CL's ecosystem requires some hacking to make it work pretty often, and the only true editor for it is Emacs and Slime, so it's not a great out of the box experience. Racket comes with an editor and a ton of libraries, so I'd recommend checking that out first (and then coming back to CL later maybe)

I believe that the absolute shortest way to start with Lisp for somebody that is already familiar with programming is Franz Inc course that is freely avaialable online here: https://franz.com/services/classes/ https://franz.com/services/classes/. It goes straight to the point and has exercises. Practical Common Lisp is a good book but takes a too long route to get to the point. I would recommend it only to somebody that is not a programmer by trade.