[chicago-lisp] Hello!

[David Douthitt]

Brian Mastenbrook wrote:
> Thanks for the experience. The Common Lisp community moves rapidly these 
> days, and you may not find it as impractical (ha!) as it used to be. For 
> starters, we have discovered lowercase letters, and write "Lisp" or 
> "Common Lisp" (abbreviated to CL) :-)

I still can't bring myself quite to using Lisp (instead of LISP) ;-)

> I would suggest you look at this guide to getting set up to learn Common 
> Lisp: http://www.unmutual.info/startingwithcl.html . The book that is 
> recommended there, Practical Common Lisp ( 
> http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ ), is quite an excellent text and 
> available both in an upcoming hardcopy version and in full text online.

I'm familiar with that; I hadn't realized how far along he had gotten now...

I have "On Lisp", and "The Common Lisp Cookbook", as well as the printed 
Common Lisp Specifications (green book, outdated, pre-standard).  I 
never realized how readable a standard could be....

> If you start with these resources I can pretty much promise that 
> learning modern CL will be enjoyable and very practical.

Best thing is to get a LISP and start hacking on it.  I picked up over 
the years PLISP for the Apple II and TI PC-Scheme - and finally clisp 
and SBCL.  I never did much until I started working with SBCL.

-- 
David Douthitt
UNIX System Administrator
Linux+, LPIC-1, RHCE
HP-UX, Unixware, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD
Member: ACM, USENIX/SAGE