Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

I just started making a serious effort to learn CL (finally, after having it "on the list" for over a decade) a few nights ago. I'd already been an Emacs user, but not an Emacs "power user". Still, it took me 20 minutes or so to get Emacs, SBCL and Slime all setup. Once it was all working, I just had to spend a few minutes learning a few key combinations I'd not bothered much with before (like how to move between frames, and then the Slime specific ones for compiling and loading Lisp files), and I was off to the races.

Now granted, I already knew my way around Emacs a little (emphasis on little), but I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to get up and running with that environment. And now I have even more motivation to truly master Emacs. Personally, I'm pretty happy with the state of the Common Lisp Ecosystem, approaching it as Lisp beginner (but not a programming beginner). shrug

Emacs feels like using a terminal connected to a minicomputer which is fine; and a good idea; if you are connecting to a Lisp app in the cloud. Something a bit more unified and graphical would be nice when working on your own PC.

Out of curiosity, how are you approaching learning it? Practical Common Lisp seems to be the most popular entry point for non-beginner programmers learning lisp.

Yeah, I decided to work my way through Practical Common Lisp. I haven't gotten very far yet, but I'm dividing my attention between that and a number of other things that I've been putting off for way too long. Like, as I sit here in front of the computer tonight before going to bed, I'm working through some of Learning R.

I started with Practical Common Lisp, but found out Lisp-koans (https://github.com/google/lisp-koans) support my flow of learning CL better, as I do some koans while commuting in the train :)

That's interesting; probably a learning-style difference, but the one time I tried a -koans (ruby-koans in this case), I found it to be a very inefficient way to learn.

To me currently the biggest learning curve in CL is that "how to use CL" e.g. list/vectors etc. and not "how do I use CL to solve X". To the former, koans are good way to get familiar with the syntax and how to use the language.

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