a journey in seek of a new language
Posted: Wed May 21, 2014 5:37 pm
I've used C and Shell Script for about 5 years. I'm by no means a master of every detail of these languages. I have tried python, but found it to be just plain boring. Nothing challenging or interesting about it for me. I've read about Lisp in the past. It's always been portrayed as some kind of super language. So, I thought it might be worth looking into as a new language.
I first tried to find out more about Common Lisp, because it has an official standard. However, their main communities treated me very rudely and with an arrogant attitude to boot. It seemed like they felt like they were incapable of mistakes.
This was quite a culture shock for me, as I am used to dealing with developers who are generally helpful, even if they can be critical at times. The major difference between the two is that they never engaged in personal attacks.
I also considered Scheme, but the language is quite difficult to write portable code in from what I've read. It sounds worse than trying to write portable C.
I also read about newlisp, which is what brings me here, in passing. How helpful is the community here?
There is a lot of reading material, but I'm not really sure where to begin. I would want to start with the fundamentals of lisp, as the syntax is like an alien language to me right now. So which material is best for this?
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_newLISP
This place looks promising, but I'm not sure if it is the proper resource for getting started.
And from there I would like a language reference. This is what I've used in the past to learn about all or most of a language's syntax constructs. However, all I've found so far is API reference and guides for how to do certain things. Am I simply missing something here? I wouldn't be surprised as Lisp is unlike any language I've used or seen before. I was looking at this specifically:
http://www.newlisp.org/downloads/newlisp_manual.html
Any helpful responses would be appreciated. Thank you.
I first tried to find out more about Common Lisp, because it has an official standard. However, their main communities treated me very rudely and with an arrogant attitude to boot. It seemed like they felt like they were incapable of mistakes.
This was quite a culture shock for me, as I am used to dealing with developers who are generally helpful, even if they can be critical at times. The major difference between the two is that they never engaged in personal attacks.
I also considered Scheme, but the language is quite difficult to write portable code in from what I've read. It sounds worse than trying to write portable C.
I also read about newlisp, which is what brings me here, in passing. How helpful is the community here?
There is a lot of reading material, but I'm not really sure where to begin. I would want to start with the fundamentals of lisp, as the syntax is like an alien language to me right now. So which material is best for this?
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_newLISP
This place looks promising, but I'm not sure if it is the proper resource for getting started.
And from there I would like a language reference. This is what I've used in the past to learn about all or most of a language's syntax constructs. However, all I've found so far is API reference and guides for how to do certain things. Am I simply missing something here? I wouldn't be surprised as Lisp is unlike any language I've used or seen before. I was looking at this specifically:
http://www.newlisp.org/downloads/newlisp_manual.html
Any helpful responses would be appreciated. Thank you.