How To Learn Lisp

For everyone (like me) who doesn't know lisp or functional programming yet, I'm gunna have to heavily endorse this (<a href="http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/fp.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/fp.html</a>) link that the "How To Learn Lisp" article gave. It's the first article that's helped me make sense of all the proselytizing going around about functional programming and continuations and currying and stuff. What it is, why it's useful, and how it's used... all laid out so I could understand it.<p>It's just a straight up must read.

"Probably because there’s no free version online and it’s a pricey book. I got it for myself for Christmas and it’s well worth the price. It’s half AI book, half tutorial on Lisp programming and Lisp style. It’s a good read with lots of example programs written in good Lisp Style."<p>I'm sad he described PAIP this way. To me, PAIP isn't even so much about Lisp or AI as it is about how god damn awesome Peter Norvig is. I think my programming became much better after I studied his style.<p>Bottom line, PAIP makes you a better programmer even if you never intend to use Lisp for anything.<p>You should learn enough Lisp to read PAIP, in other words.

I've read a few books now that are recommended for beginners to Lisp. Someone in the comments of pchristensen's blog recommended the book 'Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation'. I flicked through the first few chapters and for what it's worth it seems pretty good. Also 'Successful Lisp' is pretty good too.<p>Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation: <a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/</a><p>Successful Lisp: <a href="http://psg.com/~dlamkins/Site/sl.html" rel="nofollow">http://psg.com/~dlamkins/Site/sl.html</a>

why is everyone complaining about Emacs? I was also stubborn at first and refused to learn Emacs because it was 'strange' and 'difficult'.<p>I used Eclipse and CUSP, it's alright. It could really help you get started. But I wish I had learned Emacs earlier. The only thing I will continue to use Eclipse for is Java programming (which thankfully I don't do much of these days).