Hello,
I am trying to learn deeply this marvelous language since 2 weeks now
and while I was reading books on this topic, I went with one question:
beside its difficulty, how long does it take to learn and to use
(daily) this language ?
Any opinion ? Does this learning period depend on other programming
skills ?
Opinion appreciated
--
Hacker Wonderland Xavier Maillard| "Stand Back! I'm a programmer!"
.0. ·····@gnu-rox.orgz|
..0 (+33) 326 770 221 | Webmaster, emacsfr.org
000 PGP : 0x1E028EA5 | Membre de l' APRIL
Xavier Maillard schrieb:
> Hello,
>
> I am trying to learn deeply this marvelous language since 2 weeks now
> and while I was reading books on this topic, I went with one question:
>
> beside its difficulty, how long does it take to learn and to use
> (daily) this language ?
>
> Any opinion ? Does this learning period depend on other programming
> skills ?
>
> Opinion appreciated
After a few days I was able to create some basic programs. Theoretically
I can program now everything I want.. but not in effective and typicall
lisp style. It would be mostly imperative which can create some ugly code.
Now after learning it some few months (but not full time, only 1 to 3
hours per week) I get some more ideas about lispier programming mechanisms.
From people who code more than seven years I heared they feel
comfortable and already made good progress on the learning curve.
Andr�
--
Andr� Thieme wrote:
> Xavier Maillard schrieb:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am trying to learn deeply this marvelous language since 2 weeks now
>> and while I was reading books on this topic, I went with one question:
>>
>> beside its difficulty, how long does it take to learn and to use
>> (daily) this language ?
It is like skiing. You can have fun on the first day yet benefit from
lessons as long as you live. And the more you know, the more fun you
have. follow cll for continuing education.
my2. kenny
Kenny Tilton wrote:
> It is like skiing. You can have fun on the first day yet benefit from
> lessons as long as you live. And the more you know, the more fun you
> have. follow cll for continuing education.
Uh, oh. If Lisp is going to be as painful as my skiing, I'm DOOMED. ;-)
--
Dave Roberts, ·············@re-move.droberts.com
Slowly but surely, the programming world is finding Lisp...
http://www.findinglisp.com/blog
Xavier Maillard wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am trying to learn deeply this marvelous language since 2 weeks now
> and while I was reading books on this topic, I went with one question:
>
> beside its difficulty, how long does it take to learn and to use
> (daily) this language ?
I'd say about 6 months. In my case, it was helpful to try to implement
some big program, preferably something that I wouldn't have attempted to
do in a different language. Common Lisp shines in big applications.
> Any opinion ? Does this learning period depend on other programming
> skills ?
It is very helpful to have some general idea about a functional
programming style. Common Lisp is a multi-paradigm language that allows
you to program in imperative, object-oriented and functional programming
styles out of the box (and more styles can be easily added), but many of
the basic idioms work well only when you know how to avoid side effects
and use higher-order functions (that take and return functions).
If that's the case, and you have some general programming experience,
it's pretty safe to start to learn the language with some advanced
material, like Paul Graham's "On Lisp" or Peter Norvig's "Paradigms of
Artificial Intelligence Programming". If not, it's better to take one of
the more basic tutorials.
> Opinion appreciated
Mine is a very subjective view. I don't know which of my experiences
translate well to other people.
Pascal
--
1st European Lisp and Scheme Workshop
June 13 - Oslo, Norway - co-located with ECOOP 2004
http://www.cs.uni-bonn.de/~costanza/lisp-ecoop/
Pascal Costanza wrote:
> Xavier Maillard wrote:
>> Any opinion ? Does this learning period depend on other programming
>> skills ?
>
>
> It is very helpful to have some general idea about a functional
> programming style. Common Lisp is a multi-paradigm language that allows
> you to program in imperative, object-oriented and functional programming
> styles out of the box (and more styles can be easily added), but many of
> the basic idioms work well only when you know how to avoid side effects
> and use higher-order functions (that take and return functions).
>
> If that's the case, and you have some general programming experience,
> it's pretty safe to start to learn the language with some advanced
> material, like Paul Graham's "On Lisp" or Peter Norvig's "Paradigms of
> Artificial Intelligence Programming". If not, it's better to take one of
> the more basic tutorials.
I second this. My first truly serious entry into Lisp (after years of
toying around) was reading _On Lisp_, and I recommend it to all my
friends who I know to be good programmers, whether they want to learn
Lisp or not.
The problem I've had in really internalizing Lisp is that I
a) have a big project half-done in C that cannot be done from scratch
in Lisp due to where and how it must run (as a component of a large,
purely C system)
b) have a job that precludes any serious programming while the sun is up
c) (and most important by far) have several projects I'd like to do
or to re-do in Lisp, but would need to learn more libraries to
accomplish this (such as a web journal, my web page itself (which is
currently in version 2 in XSLT; version 1 was in PHP), and so forth)
d) want to internalize Emacs first, because it's touted so thoroughly
as "the Lisp way" to work on Lisp, but see a-c above plus a career of vi
addiction (but I'd rather do a project in Lisp using vi than learn Emacs
and not accomplish anything else)
I'd like to go with one of the web projects - say a journal/blog for
myself with varying security levels controlling which of my friends can
read which details - but there are more logistical concerns with this
(such as interfacing to a web server and dealing with SQL libraries) and
I don't feel I'd really expand my Lisp fluency in that venture.
But I did learn a lot from _On Lisp_, and am itching for an opportunity
to really apply what I've learned (beyond the small things I've written
such as a MUSE-like server (complete with MUSEcode parser), which was
admittedly much easier using CL and CLOS than it had been years ago with
C++).
Ari Johnson <·····@hotmail.com> writes:
> d) want to internalize Emacs first, because it's touted so
> thoroughly as "the Lisp way" to work on Lisp, but see a-c above plus a
> career of vi addiction (but I'd rather do a project in Lisp using vi
> than learn Emacs and not accomplish anything else)
I never did internalize Emacs and I can safely say I never will. Just
so long as I can navigate through the code quickly and work SLIME I'll
be happy.
Making the caps lock key act as the control key has been a big help
though. I should learn to type next.
--
An ideal world is left as an excercise to the reader.
--- Paul Graham, On Lisp 8.1
Ari Johnson <·····@hotmail.com> writes:
> The problem I've had in really internalizing Lisp is that I
...
> d) want to internalize Emacs first, because it's touted so
> thoroughly as "the Lisp way" to work on Lisp, but see a-c above plus a
> career of vi addiction (but I'd rather do a project in Lisp using vi
> than learn Emacs and not accomplish anything else)
If you decide to make yourself one with Emacs, I can heartily
recommend the hardcopy manuals that the FSF publish. It's the same
content as the info manual but you can read it on the bus.
See http://www.gnupress.org/ for more details.
Cheers,
Luke
Xavier Maillard <·····@gnu-rox.org> wrote in message news:<··················@gnu-rox.org>...
> Hello,
>
> I am trying to learn deeply this marvelous language since 2 weeks now
> and while I was reading books on this topic, I went with one question:
>
> beside its difficulty, how long does it take to learn and to use
> (daily) this language ?
>
How long does it take to learn the guitar? The only sensible answer
is `the rest of your life'.
--tim