Re: Cool and Useful LISP for the .emacs file

[Oliver Scholz <alkibiades@gmx.de>]

Dan Anderson <dan@mathjunkies.com> writes:

[...]
> For most professional programmers learning LISP should not be hard
> at all. For people who have never done any programming or taken
> computer science courses, I can understand how it might cause
> problems.

I firmly disagree.  Emacs Lisp was my first programming language and
I do not recall having any troubles learning it which I could
justifiedly attribute to the language.

On the contrary the (mostly) uniform and very simple syntax of Lisp
makes it very easy for a beginner. You may simply forget about the
syntax, once you understood the meaning of `'', and concentrate on the
much more important and much more difficult task of learning how to
program. Without having to struggle with semicolons and operator
precedence or whatever.

After all, by definition a beginner had no prior exposure to a pure
imperative, semicolon-driven language.

Lisp is very friendly especially for beginners.

    Oliver

PS: I would also like to note that copying and yanking only half
understood Lisp snippets may also be a good first step into learning
Emacs Lisp.
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