Average Lisp age?

I think I'm what you'd call a young lisper, I'm 21. I'm not learning lisp for college our anything, but for personal reasons. Long story short, I seem to understand what seems like fringe languages over mainstream ones like C/C++. (Shame the lisp scene isn't bigger then it should be) I think I just think differently then normal people and don't like languages that force me to do things someone else's way. Reason why I won't touch any kind of C any more, learned some in a class and hated it.

So anyways I love lisp a lot! and am interested if there are any other young guys like me out there. Also I'd really like to hear how people were introduced to lisp and why.

I turned 22 a few days ago

I started learning Lisp because some quotes or another said I'd have a near godly revelation in time and would end up a better programmer for it I had a few interesting sparks where I saw you didn't "need" to do things that have to be done so much they're habit(XML, design patterns, and needing to write SOO much code before you can actually test it) and got to have some fun parts where I got to compare logic.

Then I got bored with it because it's was annoying to use lisp outside of the lisp environment(want to use a GUI sort through abandon-ware and hope you're using the right flavor of lisp, want to use it as your web language you get 'moar' reasons to moan).

Now I'm back because the next project I want to work on will require A LOT of scripting, and I just don't have the patience for lots of scripting.

lithos wrote:I turned 22 a few days ago

I started learning Lisp because some quotes or another said I'd have a near godly revelation in time and would end up a better programmer for it I had a few interesting sparks where I saw you didn't "need" to do things that have to be done so much they're habit(XML, design patterns, and needing to write SOO much code before you can actually test it) and got to have some fun parts where I got to compare logic.

Then I got bored with it because it's was annoying to use lisp outside of the lisp environment(want to use a GUI sort through abandon-ware and hope you're using the right flavor of lisp, want to use it as your web language you get 'moar' reasons to moan).

Now I'm back because the next project I want to work on will require A LOT of scripting, and I just don't have the patience for lots of scripting.

Well, it's not (common) lisp, but I'm somewhat part of a project that's working towards a full Qt4 binding set for (currently Gambit) scheme.
sqeme.sf.net
if you're at all interested...

Oh, and I'm 28. Glad to see other (and even younger) lispers out there.
I'm not much of a programmer, but I gravitate towards programmable programs (emacs, stumpwm, conkeror(soon minno)) and I do use that facility.

I guess lispforum.com forums is full of young dogs. I'm 23

I use Lisp only as a hobby. I'm not a professional programmer in any sense, I lack many of the concepts usually familiar among programmers and I know nothing more than basic C (I look at a C program and just wonder what the hell is wrong with the programmer just joking) and perhaps shell (just simple stuff, I don't even know how to create a makefile ).

I like the way Lisp works, specially the abstraction and pattern-recognition that comes with macros. I am a student in mathematics (gonna get a master's degree by the end of this year) and sometimes I feel math and Lisp abstractions are very similar. But I still prefer math, though.

I am 25. I learned lisp when looking for better languages after feeling restricted with Cs, and C++s compiler whinage. An article about code=data and XML pushed me to learn lisp.

However, i do feel that the barrier between languages is often an rather arbitrary one. We can already import C very straightforwardly, but imo maybe we should do that automatically more, and properly maintained libs to do this seem scarce. We should probably do similar to Python. With easy access to those two, it would make being fringe not hurt much.

And we're not communicative enough it seems.

Edit: I don't really know how to make a Makefile either, i copied and altered very simple ones, otherwise i just use little scripts. I don't get how they get complicated, i don't get that they sometimes seem to have scripts to make makefiles. I guess it might be similar to the ASDF complexities we have, but on a bigger scale.

Jasper wrote:And we're not communicative enough it seems.

Well, I agree. But that is what this forum is for, isn't it? Unfortunately, this forum can't speak for all Lispers. One think that I miss is more collaborative projects like elephant or weblocks. I think we, users of this forum, could and should do some Lisp project as a group. Not sure what, though.

gugamilare wrote:

Jasper wrote:And we're not communicative enough it seems.

Well, I agree. But that is what this forum is for, isn't it? Unfortunately, this forum can't speak for all Lispers. One think that I miss is more collaborative projects like elephant or weblocks. I think we, users of this forum, could and should do some Lisp project as a group. Not sure what, though.

Agreed! All us young ones

Had an idea a while back to mix emacs+slime and standard IDE features with an original gui so that there would be less of an emacs barrier. Was waiting till I'm done with my current project though till I tackled that.

TheGZeus wrote:Oh, and I'm 28

You're the only poster so far who's been alive longer than I've been Lisping

Jonsul wrote:Agreed! All us young ones

Had an idea a while back to mix emacs+slime and standard IDE features with an original gui so that there would be less of an emacs barrier. Was waiting till I'm done with my current project though till I tackled that.

You can try helping the enhancement of Able.

27yrs. Finished my PhD in applied maths and started a new job in mid/late 2006, where a colleague gave me a printout of http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html, even though he wasn't a programmer. Learned Common Lisp as a hobby and have also used it a bit at work. Maths and Lisp must mix well.

29yrs. I'm still an undergrad student in Mathematics and kind of had a late start. Mostly I've decided I'm really interested in cognitive science and have been learning a lot of various subjects directly and indirectly connected. I actually really enjoy programming although I'm not much good at it--I don't have the patience to sit and explore small elements of some language that I see in great programmers.

22 years this weekend.

Learned the basics in Lisp for class a couple years ago, but recently started using it for real in a research internship (definitely learned a lot more that way than I did in class). I'm about to finish a Math+CS double-degree, and I find functional programming elegant.

AI is my world, and while the sort of AI Lisp was developed/used for back in the day is more or less dead, code=data can still come in handy for, say, genetic programming.

Siggy

I'm 19. I learned some Scheme for a CS class last year, and fell in love with functional programming. (Even my C code is full of higher-order functions since then.) I have been playing with Haskell for some time, and finally met Common Lisp about two months ago. So far, Common Lisp is the language I like best. I still haven't written anything large in it, though.

At the time of the post above, I was 18, but 19 now.
I'm struggling to learn Lisp as a Freshman in college because of an interest in AI and an intense dislike of the highly-structured BS that is C++.

I am 16 (!). I started learning lisp (with PCL) when I was... 15? Maybe 14, but almost certainly 15. But then I went back to Python until my friend showed me how cool Lisp was (I already knew it was pretty cool, but also I thought it was too complicated for me; turns out it's not). Now I'm not sure I could go back to Python. (Also, it seems I am tied to Common Lisp a bit more than I'd like to be; I've read a bit of Scheme and Arc and the expressions-in-function-position still trip me up a bit. )

Whats up guys. I'm 29 years old and really starting to take an interest in the Common Lisp programming language. I programmed QBASIC and a little C++ when I was a teenager but got bored with it after awhile, got bored with computers in general, however after watching some Lisp videos and reading about the language and doing some coding myself, I'm starting to get excited about programming again. I really love how this language operates, seems so fluid and intuitive.

hi all

i am new to this forum. i am 29. i learned scheme in the first year at the university. it was an one year course and it taught me a lot about programming. after nearly 10 years i came back to it as i wanted to do some basic programming exercises just for fun (i am not really a programmer, but like learning it). it makes fun the same way as it did 10 years ago. i like the parenthesis style and the brevity of code. i started to learn common lisp shortly ago. it seems to be a bit more difficult than scheme, but also seems that it has more power to some extent (correct me if i am wrong). i think lisp is the language, by learning which one get to know what is actually possible in programming world. it seems to be a very powerful language and at the same time so simple and easy to learn. at least scheme, it is actually the only language which i am able to write some small programs in. i learned some java inbetween, but scheme/lisp makes more fun and learning it is "a better food for my intellect".

yours, simplynitaai

I'm only 13. An absolute beginning Lisper, but I'm only 13! Beat that! That will mess up your average.

Hi guys (and girls)!

Hm, if you reverse the numbers in the giga-bite's age you'll get mine :-) I'm 31 and some time ago started to learn Lisp

Years ago I coded something in C++ and then in Java (J2EE), after that I had a period of activity that was not related much to programming. But now I have regained to the idea that coding and collaboration in open source projects must be better than the fuss I all the time experience here in Russia. So I would like to get used to such powerful language as Lisp and do contributions in projects related to AL (artificial life) or make my own.

Denis: If you're looking for an interesting AI project, I noticed the other day that there doesn't seem to be a good open-source grammar checker. It must be hard though, otherwise Emacs would integrate with one.

Wow. I'm the old guy: 44.

Jonsul wrote:I think I'm what you'd call a young lisper, I'm 21. I'm not learning lisp for college our anything, but for personal reasons. Long story short, I seem to understand what seems like fringe languages over mainstream ones like C/C++. (Shame the lisp scene isn't bigger then it should be) I think I just think differently then normal people and don't like languages that force me to do things someone else's way. Reason why I won't touch any kind of C any more, learned some in a class and hated it.

So anyways I love lisp a lot! and am interested if there are any other young guys like me out there. Also I'd really like to hear how people were introduced to lisp and why.

But anyway you should know some basics of C as it is the most popular language today.

I am 32. I was working on a project in Java, and was in really deep. Working on it for over a year. Then I read "Hackers and Painters". That book was a real eye opener for me. Although Lisp is esoteric, and the many PHP programmers will think you are crazy, it is a very rewarding experience. And its going to be difficult to explain why to do anything is Lisp as opposed to using a more popular language that has more accessable libraries. But the language allows you to think about programming in such an abstract way, that you may find yourself able to figure out the workings of many programs, written in languages you dont even know (nothing too crazy or mystical though, just basic programs).

I have been using the language for about 3 years, and so far wrote a webserver, on which I wrote an online user based file system, a multi threaded webserver (broken on my current system), and was working generating ebay turbolister csv files and webpages for a fledgeling business. Created a system, for example, to integrate user based programs written in a subset of Common Lisp with spreadsheets, so that column data could be proccessed acourding to a user program.

Its definately an eye opener. The problem I am running into now, is if I learned, for example PHP, I could probably get a job in the field, but that I learned something a gazillion times more powerfull, it seems I have to be more like a business founder, because businesses have very practical concerns, of whether or not they can do business without you. If you are a Lisper, the answer may very well be no.

Overall, I think you made the right move to Lisp, from my very limited perspective.

Hi there!

Wow! Average age (included mine) is only 25. I thoght that I would be among the youngest with my 22 years.

I found out about lisp quite recently when my brother gave me "Land of Lisp" by Conrad Barski. A fantasticly fine book. Fine egnough to convince me that learning common lisp can be fun and maybe even useful. Now looking for a suitable project that could push me further .

OK, so let me push it up
I'm 58

I'm 21, just now starting to get my LISP.

I'm 18, but I met with lisp* (elisp) in the book: Lenka Třísková. GNU nástroje pro tvorbu WWW stránek. Grada Publishing. 2000. ISBN 80-7169-861-X a few years ago when I've played with HTML, PHP, etc. (my website exists since 2006-11-02 09:50:52).
* But I didn't get it at that time and there is a little about it written in the book.

I'm 18 (in October I will be 19) and I use emacs+slime.

I'm 36. Started working as a programmer 14 years ago, but found LISP just a couple of years ago when one of my colleagues suggested I'd look at it.
I've used my summer vacations to learn LISP. I started out learning Common Lisp using "The Land of LISP" (Great book).
This year I have concentrated on learning Scheme by going though the lambda papers and the old SICP videoes. I like DrRacket

Im 15, but I’m not arrogant like most young would-be programmers.

28. Started programming about a year ago, for a personal project, learned Ruby and OCaml, but then started on Clojure.

Now I'm using Common Lisp (SBCL) and loving it.

Im 32 ... just started learning Lisp. Reading Paul Graham's Ansi Common Lisp ... but is pretty tough

Hi!
I'm 37 and am a hobby programmer.

I sh*t you not, but this got me onto the lisp train: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM1Zb3xmvMc while surfing for no reason.
After that I googled around and found Racket, what I use since about a year for inhouse scripting.

Now I'm diving into common lisp. Therefore I'm learning Emacs too, because of reasons.

It's fun! I like! And I annoy everyone around me with my enthusiasm

Hi everyone. I'm 17...

My functional programming story started with learning Haskell just over a year ago. Initially, I found wrapping my head around functional programming concepts insanely difficult... but, one day, it all just sort of clicked, and everything fell into place, and it has sort of become a natural way of thinking about programming now. Every time I go back to an imperative language, I think about how much easier it would be to implement the same thing in a functional language.

Anyway, a couple of months ago, I decided to step up to learning a Lisp dialect, as I had heard much lore about it being "God's chosen language" and whatever. I decided to learn Clojure.

It really gave me a new perspective. It made me see Haskell more like baby's first functional programming language, rather than seeing it as some complicated language that not many people would understand - it seemed both lacking in power, but also unnecessarily complex (especially in its dense syntax) compared to Lisp.

I am only now just starting to learn Common Lisp (SBCL), but if it weren't for my initial venture in learning Clojure, I wouldn't have discovered the joy that is writing Lisp in Emacs, and I would have remained a firm Vim believer.

Next month (Jul 2017) is my 65th birthday, and since age 28 I have had an unrequited love affair with Lisp.

Never had the chance to do any significant Lisp professionally, but have continuously returned to studying and wanting to learn it well.

It was always my opinion the Lisp programmers were "just plain smarter" (on average) than most other programmers and I want to be one of them when I grow up.

Recently my interests turned seriously to Functional Programming which the Lisp community has been doing since before the Moon landing.

Perhaps it is really the Functional Programmers who are smarter, but I still want to be one of those people is (when I grow up.)

Hi Folks,
I guess I'm the gray beard in the crowd. I just turned 70. I started programming in LISP at the age of 40 when I worked on a combat simulation for the U.S. Army's TRADOC Analysis Command. The simulation was called Eagle and was the first ever effort to create an object-oriented combat simulation that used AI (primarily rules and pattern matching) to simulate command and control. My job was to implement the fire support module. As I recall, I worked on a Symbolics 3650. What a great experience. I was the first modeler to ever implement mortar fires in an army simulation.

I stopped using LISP for several years because I was in a situation where Java was the primary focus but the principles of the object-oriented approach still applied so I was quite comfortable modeling and designing solutions.

Then I got the opportunity to create a sales and distribution planning system for the baking company. I built the system using LispWorks. The system performed statistical analysis of sales and returns for each week of the previous year determine sales and return history for each product for each of 63,000 points of sale. It then used a 12 week moving time series to calculate trend sales and returns. I used fuzzy logic to represent sales and returns for the week in history and for the trend. I applied Chebyshev's theorem to establish the fuzzy terms (HIGH, ABOVE-AVERAGE, AVERAGE, BELOW-AVERAGE, LOW) used to describe sales level and return level in the facts and rules. A set of 16 rules would create the plan. A time series analysis would forecast the total sales for each POS and a second set of approximately 16 rules would optimize the plan.
The final solution generated a huge ROI for the client, more than doubling their sales while cutting returns (waste) significantly.

A friend of mine later demonstrated the system at Java One using modified source data, changing from baked goods to beer. It was cool because all he had to do was to change the product descriptions and the POS names, all the underlying data remained the same and a fictitious beer sales and distribution plan was created.

Now I just tinker with CLOS and want to start doing some graphics work.