Lawrence, let me supplement Alex's answer. if you have programmed before, dive right into Realm. If it is your first real adventure in programming, take the time to work through HtDP. -- Matthias
On Nov 12, 2013, at 12:47 PM, Alexander McLin <alex.mc...@gmail.com> wrote: > Racket is truely a great and cleaner Lisp. It's carved out its own path that > I find quite attractive and am enjoying my forays into Racket. > > I would recommend you just get started with The Little Schemer to get a > taste, move on to How To Design Programs. There is a Coursera course that > uses HTDP, although I haven't taken it myself, is probably easier to stick > with than going through HTDP on your own. Realm of Racket is a nice book but > best read after you've already had some experience with a Lisp dialect. > > Find or plan a project using Racket as your main coding language to help you > use and grow with it. For example I'm using Racket to develop programs for > the Coursera Bioinformatics Algorithm course. > > However, I want to tell you that Common Lisp resources has plenty of valuable > information to learn even if you don't end up using CL regularly. I'm not > really a CL user but I still read a lot of CL books for interesting Lisp > history and techniques. > > Racket is also especially nice that it has a strong academic and theoretical > community with high quality written papers which are good source of material > to understand more about language design and usage. > > > On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 11:56 AM, Lawrence Bottorff <borg...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm your typical newbie who is hand-wringing over what direction to go in the > general functional programming world. Lisp, Scheme, or Haskell? > > Of late I've been trying to get through the Barski book, "Land of Lisp," but > I'm really seeing now why Scheme was created: CL seems to have a ton of gnarl > that is part-functional, part-whatever, leaving me wondering and neurotic. > And so I'm trying to understand some esoteric, arcane Lisp printing/file > management weirdness -- which I'm told is not proper functional style -- > after I've just been introduced to yet another CL map variation, after > (funcall thunk). So I guess I'd like your advice vis-a-vis Racket. Q: Is > Racket "cleaner," or is full of pork too? Or have I just got the wrong book > for a beginner? > > I understand that Barski is slavishly following the "let's get real stuff > done" philosophy, but I'm not up to speed with functional yet to even know > what's going on. Is your "Realm of Racket" better at this? I feel like I'm > spinning my wheels at this point. . . . > > LB > > > > ____________________ > Racket Users list: > http://lists.racket-lang.org/users > > > ____________________ > Racket Users list: > http://lists.racket-lang.org/users ____________________ Racket Users list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
