4 ms·
As someone who learned a little Lisp in the last few years, I think there is a good collection of books available for the newbie who wants to learn. For Common
by tom_b 13y ago
As someone who learned a little Lisp in the last few years, I think there is a good collection of books available for the newbie who wants to learn. For Common Lisp, Land of Lisp, Practical Common Lisp, and Ansi Common Lisp all seem good enough to get hacking quickly.
Thinking about community effects, I'm not as convinced a community represents a gating factor for hackers. I attend the occasional Clojure meetup (and Clojure/Conj for that matter). The meetups in my area are well-attended and run, although they could be improved with a better introduction and ice-breaker for more introverted attendees (yes, I've just outed my personality type).
But from an opportunity mindset, the Clojure community seems to have done an admirable job getting the message out. Multiple good books, the Clojure/conj, and a well-attended meetup in my area all make me feel like I may not only stretch myself and learn new programming techniques, but that I have some hope of advocating for Clojure in my workplace or, good grief, applying for an actual day job where I would use Clojure.
It's unclear to me that Common Lisp can offer that.
- 3838 13y agomight need to pick your icebreaker with care - some can be downright painful though "tell us your name, where you're from and one nice thing that happened to you this week" is a non-demanding one
- 6d0debc071 13y agoThose are all good books, I'd also recommend Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computing.
- Adrock 13y agoHi tom_b, I'm one of the co-organizers of the NYC Clojure meetup. I don't know if that's the one you attend, but I'm definitely interested in any specific ideas you might have for better introductions and ice breakers.
- tom_b 13y agoThanks for organizing a Clojure meetup, it is much appreciated. My only recommendations are quite generic - for smaller meetups, make sure a group introduction is on the agenda and actually happens. Might be nice if there were easy ways to become more active in the group, but this is hard for the meetup/talk format. I'm definitely not being critical though - I feel lucky enough to have a Clojure meetup happen in my general area. Mostly it falls back on me, as an interested-in-the-community hacker to find a way actually be social and integrate myself into that group.