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Lisp from Nothing, Second Edition

(t3x.org)
366 points nils-m-holm | 1 comments | 27 Aug 25 09:50 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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AnonC ◴[30 Aug 25 04:28 UTC] No.45071926[source]▶
Under “The Intended Audience” (page 10 of the PDF sample on the site), it says that this is not an introduction to LISP and that it would be more enjoyable with some prerequisites.

Where does one — who has no knowledge of these prerequisites or about LISP (except that the latter has been heard in programming circles as something esoteric, extremely powerful, etc.) — start, before reading this book?

replies(5): >>45071961 #>>45073156 #>>45073538 #>>45073643 #>>45074942 #
1. leoc ◴[30 Aug 25 14:25 UTC] No.45074942[source]▶
If you're already fairly comfortable with computer programming, The Little Schemer would be almost perfect for this. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262560993/the-little-schemer/ It would be well worth reading some of the sequel The Seasoned Schemer https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262561006/the-seasoned-schemer/ too. In theory TLS should be accessible to anyone, but I've seen a couple of non-programmers bounce off it pretty hard. In those cases HtDP (as mentioned by m-a-t-t-i https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45073156 ) should hopefully be slow enough to be accessible.