Which Lisp should I learn? [closed]

Answer 1

Conjecture: when learning your first lisp, don't learn one you'll end up using for end development.

Lemma: learn Arc. It's all of the "hard to grok" things in lisp - closures, macros, continuations, with none of Clojure's Java interop complexity, CL's namespace confusion, or Scheme's name fragmentation. If you're dedicated, you can learn all of these things in a weekend. If you're sharp and dedicated, in a night.

And it'll make learning all the other lisps a lot easier.

Answer 2

Just pick one, and learn it. By the time you figure out the differences, you'll be in a position to choose again, if you chose badly the first time.

Answer 3

Clojure is a great dialect of LISP that promotes functional programming. It runs on the JVM so you have access to any Java libraries you might be used to using. The site has great documentation and screencasts to help you learn. Another advantage is that it's really easy to install, unlike a lot of other dialects.

If you're just looking to grok the concepts Emacs (EmacsLISP specifically) is another alternative. It comes with incredible documentation, tutorials, and lots of code samples. Screencasts are fairly easy to find as well. One of the great benefits of Emacs is that the editor is written in LISP so the editor naturally has very good support for running, editing and debugging LISP. In addition, you can extend the editor to make your every day text editing needs easier while you learn LISP.

Answer 4

I am a fan of Scheme, but it has been more than 10 years since I did anything with Scheme.

like others have said - just pick one and go.

Answer 5

There are very few real choices there, either SBCL, Clojure or PLTScheme.