Hello from Spain

[Moquete]

¡Hola! ¿Qué tal?

Hi, everyone! How are you? I have become a member of this forum because I (want to) love Lisp. We are at the beginning of the romance, so it's like a blend of fear and illusion,

I'm not a computer science professional, in fact, my job is about words more than numbers. I'm just a guy who wants to make his own life happier. Now, a little history about me: Many years ago when I was teen I bought a book for learning C++. I spent many nights with variables, arrays and, of course, too many bugs! But one night, not, one day (because sleeping frees your RAM) I decided I should to study some Maths basics for understanding and writing better C++ code. Some years after fighting with blackboards and chalks, I found out that giving up formulaes and functions in order to (re)learn C++ would be really stupid. My mother language is Spanish but my "Nature" language is Maths, so, why should I to throw all that knowledge out? Many friends titled my ideas as "nightmares of the Reason" -"learn Java", "learn VisualBasic"...- but I know I'm walking on the sunny side of the street That day I discovered Maths deserve respect and love forever. That day I decided I had to "speak" that ancient language called "LISP". If Lisp was a religion, Maths would be God. So, it's time to pray!!

Thank you for reading my presentation and a big hug for all "believers".

¡Hasta luego!

Postdata: My English level is basic so excuse me for mistakes!

[Goheeca]

Hi there,

as I read your post, I'd recommend you to learn and (to love ) two languages: Common Lisp and Haskell. In the case of the former one you should make yourself familiar with metaprogramming (macros & reader macros) and in the latter case that's where you'll find beautiful connection with mathematics.

[sylwester]

Hola / Hei

I actually started learning the very first version of Lisp, based on an essay by Paul Graham called The roots of Lisp. I then started with Common Lisp using the book The land of lisp. I then went trough the SICP videos. After than I read the first lambda papers and then the R5RS report.

I have to admit that before starting with Lisp I actually tried learning Haskell, but having only ever programmed algol languages like Java, perl and JavaScript I has no way of assimilating between the languages. After knowing CL and Scheme I can read haskell code better today than when I tried to understand it before so I guess knowing pairs and higher order procedures/function help with understandng a lot of elementary Haskell. Perhaps I'll give it another go next summer.

In my job I'm writing JavaScript, but in my spear time I'm thinking about programming language features and trying out my ideas usually in Scheme. It's probably because DrRacket has amazing features if you want to make new languages rather than a choice between Scheme and CL. I love some aspects and hate others with both languages but often you cannot do design choices without getting both benefits and downsides.

I love esoteric languages so I'm currently writing a lisp golfing language based on single letter procedure names and fixed arity, making parenthesis totally redundant in the language.

[Moquete]

Thank you Goheeca!!

Thank you Sylwester!!

I will follow your great advices!!