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Learning Lisp

Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2016 5:40 am
by GengyangCai
Ok,

I am a newbie here. From Singapore ... studied electrical engineering(Bachelors) at Northwestern University for around 7 years but dropped out of school a few times due to depression, suicidal ideation and lack of motivation and got my student visa denied the last time I reapplied back about 5 years ago. Now I am stuck in Singapore . Started reading up on Paul Graham's work and reading his book "Ansi Common Lisp" ... Plan is to build a great Lisp startup that has lots of users and turns into a very successful software company like Google and Facebook and use this as a platform to hopefully emigrate to United States where I can raise a family. (the best country in the world with the most powerful technologies). Users are the main thing that will decide whether a startup will succeed like Google or tank like Pets.com ... My dream is to build a great startup like Google and Facebook that tons of users love

Gengyang

Re: Learning Lisp

Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2016 2:28 pm
by sylwester
Learning by doing. Pick up a book if you have no idea where to start, but be sure to make subtle changes in the examples and try out stuff since that is how you learn.

Common Lisp resources:
Land of Lisp (I love this one, but it's not free)
Practical Common Lisp (Love this one too, use the loop chapter as reference)
The roots of lisp (I love this essay by Paul Graham, but it might be best to read after you know a little)

Scheme
SICP videos (for older version, but still good way to learn the fundamentals)
SICP book (newer edition than the video, but not the latest. Still good though)
How to design programs (actually for Racket)
The little Schemer (not free)

Now if you already know how to program it's most likely an algol language and since a new algol language have many syntactic similairies with the old you are not learning a new language but a new dialect of one you already know. Your first lisp would be different, but the second lisp will have a lot similarities with the first. Be patient with your first lisp since there are fewer assimilations you can do.