> Don't feel bad. You have been poorly served by those who write Lisp
> tutorials and by this NG, who by now should know (because I have made
> this point a thousand times) that the Real Problem is bad tutorials.
In most language communities, far too many tutorials are written by
people who haven't advanced far with the language themselves. First
you write a few simple try-out programs, and when they seem to be
working you write a tutorial.
Luckily, I don't think it's as bad in the Lisp community. It takes a
while to get confident with Lisp, and by the time you start thinking
about writing a tutorial you've probably reached a higher level of
competence than most tutorial writers.
The point of this rant is to suggest that someone write a tutorial for
Lisp tutorial writers. Just some guidelines, a couple of suggestions
for what should go first and what should come later, some pointers to
problems with oversimplification, a few hints for acceptable
shortcuts.
Before everyone starts rolling their eyes, consider that 1) if I'm
right, Lisp tutorial writers would be capable of making good use of
such a tutorial, and 2) this kind of (web) tutorials is (I think)
becoming the most common way to approach a new language; good
tutorials up the "rocks" score, while bad tutorials up the "sucks"
score.