From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Konrad Hinsen Subject: Re: Help with Learning Programming and LISP Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2019 08:34:30 +0200 Message-ID: References: <9618e0b6e24159251b9d264659149b615a641561.camel@disroot.org> <874l1l9qnd.fsf@elephly.net> <05840a988fb0592a67f8372650aba5cdc81b499e.camel@disroot.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:43033) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1i8Igf-0004mW-DY for help-guix@gnu.org; Thu, 12 Sep 2019 02:34:38 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1i8Ige-00023W-EQ for help-guix@gnu.org; Thu, 12 Sep 2019 02:34:37 -0400 Received: from wout2-smtp.messagingengine.com ([64.147.123.25]:45179) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1i8Ige-00023G-4G for help-guix@gnu.org; Thu, 12 Sep 2019 02:34:36 -0400 In-Reply-To: <05840a988fb0592a67f8372650aba5cdc81b499e.camel@disroot.org> Content-Language: en-US List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-guix-bounces+gcggh-help-guix=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Help-Guix" To: help-guix@gnu.org, raghavgururajan@disroot.org On 12/09/2019 03:16, Raghav Gururajan wrote: > I have a doubt though, do I have to learn dialects of LISP in a > particular order? No, you can learn each of them on its own, and proceed in any order if you want to learn all three of them. If your main goal is to learn about the core features of the Lisp family, I'd start with Scheme, which is the smallest and most coherent Lisp dialect. Common Lisp is huge in comparison, but if you try to write real-life programs in Scheme, you will discover that there are actually good reasons for having a large standardized language. The other main difference is that Common Lisp implementations tend to have much better development environments and in particular much better debuggers, which is also a consequence of the minimalist vs. practical tool approaches taken by the two dialects. In my opinion, there is exactly one reason for learning Emacs Lisp: to configure and extend Emacs. Some people also use Emacs Lisp for text processing tasks, because Emacs provides an excellent support library for that. But as a language, Emacs Lisp is mostly considered outdated and inferior to either Scheme or Common Lisp. I would definitely not recommend learning Emacs Lisp as a typical modern Lisp. Konrad.