Page 1 of 1

LISP

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 11:15 am
by Chalks
Does this community have any opinions on the value of learning LISP? I've had it recommended to me as something worthwhile to help broaden my programming acumen. I am already fairly fluent in C++, C, and PHP so I think that learning something as different as LISP might be a good idea. Any thoughts/other suggestions?

Re: LISP

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 12:59 pm
by jayshields
I learnt the basics of LISP a few years ago. It's very frustrating to accomplish anything substantial. I doubt that learning it would benefit your programming skills to be honest. Also, it's hard to find decent resources on LISP on the net.

Re: LISP

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 2:05 pm
by Weirdan
Good idea, I'd say.

Re: LISP

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 4:23 pm
by omniuni
I'm afraid I'm with Jay. Python or Ruby would be much more practical options. Maybe ERLANG if you wanted something... different... eh, nevermind. Python or Ruby.

Re: LISP

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 5:22 pm
by pickle
LISP is great because, if for no other reason, it forces you to change/expand how you look at problems. My professor was a bit of a sadist & didn't let us assign variables in our LISP assignments, so it really forced me to examine recursion & how to use it.

Knowing the language won't be incredibly useful. Learning the language will be.

Re: LISP

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 5:34 pm
by omniuni
My professor was a bit of a sadist & didn't let us assign variables in our LISP assignments
What a pickle you must have been in.

(You're right, of course, in what you said in the rest of the post.)

Re: LISP

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 5:49 pm
by Weirdan
omniuni wrote:Python or Ruby.
They are too similar to C/PHP. Not a good choice.

I'd say Forth, Lisp or Haskell. Or Erlang, yeah.

Re: LISP

Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 11:42 pm
by Chalks
I want to broaden the way I look at problems when programming, I'm not necessarily looking for a buzzword to add to a resumé.

So, thanks very much for the advice. I think Pickle really confirmed that Lisp is what I was looking for. Besides, I've really been enjoying the heck out of the language in the past couple days, so I think I'll stick with it for awhile. It's already got my mind all twisted up in recursive knots. As for online resources, I've been finding this book (and this blog post) quite useful. I'll probably shell out some bucks for ANSI Common Lisp soon though.

Re: LISP

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 9:56 am
by Ollie Saunders
When I first learnt Ruby it blew me away. Now I can't really be bothered with it. It might be worth learning enough Ruby or Python to have that "Aha!" experience then go off and learn a language in a completely different paradigm -- functional is hawt these days. Clojure is functional and a lisp and actually useful (excellent Java integration) and will look good on a resume.