When did you first try Lisp seriously, and which Lisp family member was it?
Hrm. I guess it all started a couple of months ago, and I dived into Common Lisp performing some convoluted triple-twist move on the way... see below.
I'm currently using CMUCL mainly, with a little LispWorks too.
What led you to try Lisp?
I've been aware of Lisp for quite some time; but I've never had the time to really explore it. Now that my family is older, I am able to devote more time to exploring all those things I've wanted to explore for a while, one of which being Lisp.
Where did your road originate?
Most of my development is done professionally and we use Java at work. Not particularly liking most Java IDEs I started using Emacs + JDE to develop. This led me to attempt to write some elisp code (I forget now what I was even trying to do... I didn't ever finish it that's for sure!), and whilst hunting around for resources I came across a post to c.l.l recommending somebody to learn Common Lisp rather than elisp which caused me to persue CL rather then finish up the Emacs code I initially started.
This in turn led to me trying CMUCL, SBCL, LispWorks and Allegro looking for an environment in which I was comfortable (to be honest I still haven't found one in which I'm totally comfortable, and the search (inevitably?) led me towards Lisp machines / LispOS, and now onwards to McCLIM).
How far have you gotten in your study of Lisp?
Well... I've digested ANSI Common Lisp by Paul Graham, but not much has stuck in the old grey matter yet. I could do with finding a hard-backed version of this book since the pages have started falling out of the paper back I flick backwards and forwards through it so much!
I'd like to think I'm aware of most of the CL concepts, but everything I do takes longer than I'd like since I have to look pretty much everything up and the HyperSpec makes it very easy to get distracted into looking at other areas so I'm spending quite a lot of time on diversions at the moment ;-)
What do you think of Lisp so far? It's been a while since something grabbed my interest quite so much. I guess the last time would have been in the early '90s when I first found Linux (Slackware 3.0 IIRC). Certainly I'm learning more than I expected to, and I'm able to do more than I thought I would in the time I've been able to devote to Lisp so far. My problem at the moment is I want to do _everything_ and there aren't enough hours in the day!
Please delete all but one of these cross-referencing tags: Switch Date 2003
RtL Language Curiosity | RtL Emacs Elisp