Re: Learning LISP from scratch

Carlo Capocasa <theman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

The subject under discussion is "learning Lisp," not "learning how to
use C development tactics in a Lisp environment."

If you know C development, I think it's good to use lisp like C at
first. It lets you grasp the differences gently.

If you wish to learn Lisp, open your mind to the generosity of very
talented developers such as Edi, who are offering very good advice, if
you would heed it.

I still think learning Emacs at the same time as learning Lisp is
quite a mouthful to swallow, so just using a text editor seems like
a good idea to me.

Not entering the (largely) pointless arguement, but wanted to point out
that you may have a misconception of what you have to learn to use
emacs. While emacs is very powerful and very customizable with lots of
really nice features that make working in languages like lisp very
productive, there is no requirement to learn all of these features in order
to use emacs. It simply isn't an all or nothing situation.

Emacs can be used in a very basic way very effectively and easily. It
certainly can provide the same level of interface you have with gedit and
command line interpreter as distinct separate processes. You don't *have*
to learn key bindings for inserting matching '()' or indentation or any of
the other advanced features - you can use it just like it was a dumb simple
editor. All common tasks are available from the menu bar (open file, save,
cut, copy paste etc). You can even just use it as a more sophisticated
interface to sbcl, giving you history witht he up/down arrows.

There is no denying that there is a lot of great functionality provided by
emacs and slime that can provide a really powerful development environment,
but users should not be put off by the fear of an unmanageable learning
curve. Unlike editors like VI (an editor which is very good BTW), you don't
have the somewhat alien to many, different modes. Emacs largely behaves as
people would expect an editor to behave. Once you are comfortable with the
basics, you can then begin to explore the more advanced features at your
leisure.

The final point, made by others, which should not be ignored is that using
emacs and slime can actually make learning CL easier for the beginner
because it does things like provide function completion and hints in the
min-buffer on arguments, something you don't get with a gedit/sbcl interp
combination.

Finally, there is no right/wrong answer here - it comes down to personal
taste. I know some very experienced and productive lispers that use a
combination of VI and a separate lisp process in another window. The point
I wanted to make is that you shouldn't discount emacs because of a belief
that adding it into the mix will create an overly steep learning curve -
you simply don't need to master emacs before you can benefit from the
integration it provides.

Tim

--
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au
.

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