Hello there.

Whatever is on your mind, whether Lisp related or not.
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Owain
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2012 3:58 pm

Hello there.

Post by Owain » Fri Aug 17, 2012 4:10 pm

Hello. I belive that it is common courtesy to announce one's self on internet forums so this is what I am doing. I also have a question to pose to anyone kind enough to read my topic. I am a C++ programmer with six months experiance. I am particularly interested in 3D graphics/game programming (especially with OpenGL) but I am interested in most aspects of programming (I am intrested in AI too). I want to learn Lisp (Common Lisp specificly) because a number of programmers told me that it is the best language ever, as do many other famous computer scientists. Although one person did tell me that Lisp is not really a general-purpose language, unlike C++ which is. My question is, would it be appropriate for my to learn Lisp and would I benefit from learning it? If so, I would be very greatful if you could give me a good tutorial for learning common Lisp. If I do end up using Lisp, I look forward to contributing to this forum in any way that I can.

Thank-you for reading my post. :)

nuntius
Posts: 538
Joined: Sat Aug 09, 2008 10:44 am
Location: Newton, MA

Re: Hello there.

Post by nuntius » Fri Aug 17, 2012 5:52 pm

CL is very much a general-purpose language. The PCL book (see CL forum's FAQ) is a good online source to read.

What will you learn from CL? IF statements can return values, regular syntax means you don't have to write parsers for custom languages and data files, real macros can be so much nicer than cpp macros and C++ templates, multiple dispatch is awesome, interactive programming doesn't mean you need a slow/interpreted language, dynamic variables are halfway between lexical and global variables, anonymous (lambda) functions are really useful, etc.

I would also recommend taking a look at Racket. It is a Scheme, not a CL, but it is much more featureful than most Schemes and it has a strong user community.

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