Which Lisp should I learn? [closed]

Answer 1

I think you either want Common Lisp or PLT Scheme.

The former comes with a lot of freedom and power (that might overwhelm you at first) and the latter comes with a bunch of libraries, matching tutorials and a well-integrated IDE.

Answer 2

I do not know Lisp but heres why I think PLT Scheme is a good choice:

1. Really Good Documentations
   http://download.plt-scheme.org/doc/html/

2. DrScheme
   DrScheme is an amazing programming environment that comes with a compiler, stepper, syntax checkers, REPL, myriad of languages support and is extensible. This makes the entire experience fun. See some screenshots

3. Good Support from the community.
   The community is very enthusiastic about their language and very supportive too. If you have any questions, mailing lists, groups and forums are available. Even the authors are very very accessible.

4. Continuing Research
   PLT is very active and continue to make their tool better and better. You can expect a lot of innovations from the labs. eg. Im pretty excited about using this: http://blog.plt-scheme.org/2009/05/typed-scheme-20.html

5. Free Books and interesting tutorials to get you started.
   http://www.htdp.org/
   http://world.cs.brown.edu/

6. Good modules and extensive libraries.
   http://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/develop/
   http://planet.plt-scheme.org/ also see docs

If you are learning Scheme, give DrScheme a try.

Answer 3

Go with Clojure. It's an amazing language with full access to any Java library. It has been in development for just over 2 years and already has 3 IDE plugins in development and a book being published in April about it. It's very fast, very elegant and beautiful. You can't go wrong with Clojure.

Answer 4

Lisp's biggest problem is that there's no overriding standard everyone sticks to. You don't just have to pick between Common Lisp and Scheme; you have to pick between several incompatible implementations of Common Lisp and several incompatible implementations of Scheme, as well as other little things like Arc and Clojure.

I would recommend starting with MzScheme. It's popular, it's actively developed, it has many libraries offering the features of a modern programming environment, and Scheme is somewhat simpler (not to say better, just simpler) than Common Lisp.

Answer 5

Learn elisp so you can extend Emacs.

Answer 6

Take a look at IronScheme.