On 26/10/11 9:41 PM, Toby Thain wrote:
On 26/10/11 7:59 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
> On 27 October 2011 00:41, Toby Thain<toby at telegraphics.com.au> wrote:
>> On 26/10/11 6:17 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
>>> ...
>>> The more I read about Lisp, the more I want to understand... but I
>>> suspect I am too old&
> ...
> I don't currently have the spare budget for buying books, but I do
> have a few PDFs:
> * Common Lisp - A gentle introduction to symbolic computation book
> * COMMON LISP: An Interactive Approach
> ... and some elderly text.
>
> As I try to read them, I get this sinking feeling after half a dozen
> pages where what started off making sense quietly and subtly turns to
> word soup. ...
I would advise not to begin with Common Lisp. Start
with Scheme, and
those two texts I mentioned (one of which is online).
The implementation I use is Chicken Scheme, which as they say is
portable and practical. If you run the interpreter with 'rlwrap' you get
command history (cursor up/cursor down) - indispensable for
experimentation, really.
http://call-cc.org/
You will also need an editor which will help you balance parentheses;
vim -l (lisp-mode) will do this. I also use Eclipse with the SchemeWay
plugin, depending on my mood.
And I use version control to keep track of exercises and puzzles. I find
this helps me keep my bearings and feel like I'm moving forward. Try github!
--Toby