I, Geoff Wozniak, do solemnly offer these my responses to The Road to Lisp Survey:
When did you first try Lisp seriously, and which Lisp family member was it?
In my third year of undergraduate studies (circa 2000), I took a course on programming languages that introduced me to Scheme. One of the assignments was to implement a parser for numbers (as per R5RS) and it had to be done in a functional manner (composition of functions, one for each grammar rule, and so forth). I remember the precise moment where I "got" functional programming. I went from struggling with the assignment to having it finished within a couple of hours. Scheme has had a soft spot in my heart ever since. I got to like DrScheme, but due to the nature of the undergraduate program, I was pretty much stuck using C until I graduated, although I did pick up CLtL2 in the mean time. I didn't read it right away, but I knew it would come in handy. Plus, CLtL2 is just one of those books that makes your bookshelf look important.
After becoming enamoured by type systems for a while in grad school, I switched to Common Lisp in the summer of 2005 when I was working on a domain specific language and I wanted to avoid the need to work with the lex/yacc line of tools again. defmacro and the Lisp reader were more appealing.
Within a few months, I had implemented a complex pattern matcher that had continuations and allowed for dependent pattern matches. It saved me so much time and was so much more enjoyable than working in the ML/OCaml world that I have had little desire to go back.
What led you to try Lisp?
I was looking at writing a domain specific language for complex pattern matching. I wrote a first version in OCaml, but I found the type system to be intrusive. Types were things that evolved when I worked and OCaml -- even with a REPL and decent Emacs mode -- didn't encourage such a process. In short, it didn't flow. I knew of Lisp macros and decided to see what I could do with them. Turns out they flow quite nicely.
What other languages have you been using most?
In elementary school, I toyed with Basic, like most people who had a Commodore 64. My undergraduate days were mostly filled with Pascal, C and C++. I got familiar with Scheme and Prolog, and wrote my undergraduate thesis in Perl (that was an experience, to say the least).
After the compilers course in my last year of undergrad, I got into ML and OCaml. I used them for about four years, then made the leap to the "dynamic" world via Common Lisp.
How far have you gotten in your study of Lisp?
I feel confident that I have achieved a level of competency, but with great humility.
The one thing about studying Lisp is that I don't just want to know the "what" or the "how"; I want to know the "why." The competency comes from knowing the "what" and the "how," but the humility is served up in large doses by way of the "why."
What do you think of Lisp so far?
I've never been this content programming in my life. Common Lisp has its flaws and those should be addressed -- and have been detailed elsewhere so I won't repeat them. Lisp is the first language I've used where the flaws are not at odds with my programming style and thought process. That reason alone is enough to keep me using it.
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