Re: What defines *really* knowing Lisp, in your opinion?

jonathon wrote: 
Robert Strandh wrote:

I am not sure about the motivation for your question.  Would you like
for someone to tell you that you can safely ignore some features and
still "really know Lisp"?  In my opinion, that is not a good idea.


My motivation is as I learn the language, I will have ways to measure
my progress and plan my next goal to achieve.  Since the language and
the techniques that come with it can be so different from those I know
now, I think this would be helpful.

I don't think you can really learn Lisp (or much of anything) in such a piecemeal fashion. You need to learn just enough about the different parts of Lisp to know how to use them, and then practice, practice, practice, practice, practice.

Learn enough about macros to feel that you could write many of the macros that are already in COMMON-LISP. In particular, DOLIST, DO*, DO, and LET* are good practice macros.
Learn enough about closures to understand how FLET, LABELS, and LAMBDA all work.
Learn enough about CLOS to understand how you write OO software in it, and how generic functions are more powerful than virtual functions.

Then start writing actual software, with an eye toward removing code duplication. This is the most important step. Lisp's features allow you to abstract away patterns in simple, direct, yet fast ways that no other language has.

  -- MJF
.

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