Why should I learn Lisp? [closed]

Answer 1

complicated syntax??

The syntax for lisp is incredibly simple.

Killer app written in lisp: emacs. Lisp will allow you to extend emacs at will to do almost anything you can think of that an editor might do.

But, you should only learn lisp if you want to, and you may never get to use at work ever, but it is still awesome.

Also, I want to add: even if you find places where lisp will make sense, you will probably not convince anyone else that it should be used over java, c++, c#, python, ruby, etc.

Answer 2

Okay, I might be weird but I really don't like Paul Graham's essays that much & on Lisp is a really rough going book if you don't have some grasp of Common Lisp already. Instead, I'd say go for Siebel's Practical Common Lisp. As for "killer-apps", Common Lisp seems to find its place in niche shops, like ITA, so while there isn't an app synonymous with CL the way Rails is for Ruby there are places in industry that use it if you do a little digging.

Answer 3

Killer app? Franz Inc. has a long list of success stories, but this list only includes users of AllegroCL... There are probably others. My favourite is the story about Naughty Dog, since I was a big fan of the Crash Bandicoot games.

For learning Common Lisp, I'd recommend Practical Common Lisp. It has a hands-on approach that at least for me made it easier than other books I've looked at.

Answer 4

One of the main uses for Lisp is in Artificial Intelligence. A friend of mine at college took a graduate AI course and for his main project he wrote a "Lights Out" solver in Lisp. Multiple versions of his program utilized slightly different AI routines and testing on 40 or so computers yielded some pretty neat results (I wish it was online somewhere for me to link to, but I don't think it is).

Two semesters ago I used Scheme (a language based on Lisp) to write an interactive program that simulated Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First" routine. Input from the user was matched against some pretty complicated data structures (resembling maps in other languages, but much more flexible) to choose what an appropriate response would be. I also wrote a routine to solve a 3x3 slide puzzle (an algorithm which could easily be extended to larger slide puzzles).

In summary, learning Lisp (or Scheme) may not yield many practical applications beyond AI but it is an extremely valuable learning experience, as many others have stated. Programming in a functional language like Lisp will also help you think recursively (if you've had trouble with recursion in other languages, this could be a great help).

Answer 5

I agree that Lisp is one of those languages that you may never use in a commercial setting. But even if you don't get to, learning it will definitely expand your understanding of programming as a whole. For example, I learned Prolog in college and while I never used it after, I gave me a greater understanding of many programming concepts and (at times) a greater appreciation for the languages I do use.

But if you are going to learn it...by all means, read On Lisp

Answer 6

Complicated syntax? The beauty of lisp is that it has a ridiculously simple syntax. It's just a list, where each element of the list can be either another list or an elementary data type.

It's worth learning because of the way it enhances your coding ability to think about and use functions as just another data type. This will improve upon the way you code in an imperative and/or object-oriented language because it will allow you to be more mentally flexible with how your code is structured.