Hello everyone,

I have been thinking of learning a programming language this year and I
thought that lisp might be a good language to learn. I've read somewhere
that Emacs is basically just an interpreter for Lisp code and I wanted
to know whether going through the ordeal of learning Emacs could be a
good way to get into lisp.

I know this might seem a bit noob-ish. But if there's any resources for
a non-programmer like me to read and get into, please let me know.

Cheers!

--
Give them an inch and they will take a mile.
--
gemini://rtr.kalayaan.xyz

rtr <rtr@nospam.invalid> writes:

> I have been thinking of learning a programming language this year

A very good resolution.

> and I thought that lisp might be a good language to learn.

Yes, an eye-opening experience, see

https://lispers.org/

Even though for me it was already language number 7, it was hugely
rewarding.

> I've read somewhere that Emacs is basically just an interpreter for
> Lisp code

Yes.

> and I wanted to know whether going through the ordeal of learning
> Emacs could be a good way to get into lisp.

IMHO yes. I have been using Emacs for 25 years now. When I started to
play around with things in its customization file (which is written in
Emacs Lisp) it felt very strange, since the language was so
"different". But somehow I muddled through, without much
understanding. Then, maybe 5 years back, I decided to learn Lisp (mostly
out of curiosity) and went for learning Emacs Lisp, because then it any
case it would have additional practical value apart from the language
knowledge itself.

So I started with the "Introduction to Emacs Lisp" (available from the
editor easily) and was quickly hooked: The stuff that I previously only
tinkered with became clear. From there I explored along multiple paths
(there are lots of good Lisp books out in the Web).

> if there's any resources for a non-programmer like me to read and get
> into, please let me know

I would consider the Emacs Tutorial (available from inside the editor)
as mandatory for basic familiarity with the editor (before you dive into
the language). By the way, this little tutorial got a colleague under my
mentoring already hooked, since Emacs is unbelievably more powerful than
the garden variety of "ordinary editors". Then the "Emacs Manual" (same
access) up to (and including), say, "The Major Structures of Emacs".

To me, learning Lisp was intellectually the most rewarding project for,
say, the last 10 years. So I kind of envy you for your upcoming
endeavour!

Best regards

Axel

Sorry for the double follow-up, but I forgot to include this link:

http://www.lisperati.com/casting-spels-emacs/html/casting-spels-emacs-1.html

This should also be quite a nice get-going.

Axel

On 2022-01-25, Axel Reichert <mail@axel-reichert.de> wrote:
> rtr <rtr@nospam.invalid> writes:
>
>> I have been thinking of learning a programming language this year
>
> A very good resolution.

Thanks! I have been trying to get into programming for the past few
years now. I always find myself to have a hard time getting into the
mindset of it. I hope I would be able to stick to it this time though.

>
>> and I thought that lisp might be a good language to learn.
>
> Yes, an eye-opening experience, see
>
> https://lispers.org/
>
> Even though for me it was already language number 7, it was hugely
> rewarding.
>

The article that the site pointed to seems like a good read. Thanks!

>> and I wanted to know whether going through the ordeal of learning
>> Emacs could be a good way to get into lisp.
>
> IMHO yes. I have been using Emacs for 25 years now. When I started to
> play around with things in its customization file (which is written in
> Emacs Lisp) it felt very strange, since the language was so
> "different". But somehow I muddled through, without much
> understanding. Then, maybe 5 years back, I decided to learn Lisp (mostly
> out of curiosity) and went for learning Emacs Lisp, because then it any
> case it would have additional practical value apart from the language
> knowledge itself.
>
> So I started with the "Introduction to Emacs Lisp" (available from the
> editor easily) and was quickly hooked: The stuff that I previously only
> tinkered with became clear. From there I explored along multiple paths
> (there are lots of good Lisp books out in the Web).
>

25 years is a lot of time! I hope I get to that point in the future. I'm
already quite proficient (I think?) with Vim. Though I don't think I
really understand how it works. I mostly just use the common stuff with
it. The regex search, the "s/" and "g/" stuff and the modal keybindings
like "ciw" and "ci<".

Anyway, enough blabber. I was just thinking that maybe it's a good idea
to understand the tool that I'm using and I thought maybe emacs can help
me on that.

>> if there's any resources for a non-programmer like me to read and get
>> into, please let me know
>
> I would consider the Emacs Tutorial (available from inside the editor)
> as mandatory for basic familiarity with the editor (before you dive into
> the language). By the way, this little tutorial got a colleague under my
> mentoring already hooked, since Emacs is unbelievably more powerful than
> the garden variety of "ordinary editors". Then the "Emacs Manual" (same
> access) up to (and including), say, "The Major Structures of Emacs".
>
> To me, learning Lisp was intellectually the most rewarding project for,
> say, the last 10 years. So I kind of envy you for your upcoming
> endeavour!
>
> Best regards
>
> Axel

Thanks for the pointers! I'm currently going through the emacs tutorial as
I type this. I do hope that this pursuit would be rewarding for me. I
really want to learn a programming language. Haha!

Cheers

--
Give them an inch and they will take a mile.
--
gemini://rtr.kalayaan.xyz

On Monday, January 24, 2022 at 11:57:16 PM UTC-8, rtr wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I have been thinking of learning a programming language this year and I
> thought that lisp might be a good language to learn.

Great.
We're generally really big fans here.

But be forewarned, that lisp is quite different from a lot of other programming
languages, so depending on your larger objectives this may or may not be the
best choice. But it does expose you to a lot of good ideas that can be applied
in other languages. But the syntax (surface form) is very different.

On the plus side, it is (can be) an interactive language, which can help a lot in
trying things out. There is a lot lower overhead to getting started.

> I've read somewhere
> that Emacs is basically just an interpreter for Lisp code and I wanted
> to know whether going through the ordeal of learning Emacs could be a
> good way to get into lisp.

I don't think so.

Emacs as an application is a text editor and it presents a user interface
for editing text (as opposed to a word processor). So you would need to
initially learn how to use the program and that doesn't require or even
really expose you to any lisp code.

It's sort of like how PhotoShop plug-ins are written in C++, but you wouldn't
see that if you tried using Photoshop.

Back to Emacs, it does use lisp internally and you can use the Emacs Lisp
to customize and extend what it does. But most uses of Emacs don't actually
require lisp to do. And Emacs lisp has some quirks that make it not the best
dialect of lisp to learn.

Depending on what you want to do, I would suggest starting with either
Common Lisp (several implementations available) or Scheme (likewise
several implementations available). Some of these will come with graphical
interfaces and perhaps more familiar editing interfaces than what you
would find with Emacs (even though I am a big fan and use Emacs in
my daily work).

> I know this might seem a bit noob-ish. But if there's any resources for
> a non-programmer like me to read and get into, please let me know.

There are a number of introductory books that have been produced over the
years. It doesn't matter if some of them are years old, as Common Lisp hasn't
changed in a while (although some libraries for doing things have).

You could try searching this group or doing a web search for "Learning Lisp".
(I unfortunately don't have time to track down the references right at the moment.)

* Tom Russ <fc623a54-4cf2-438b-b4b5-b196e70f3271n@googlegroups.com> :
Wrote on Wed, 26 Jan 2022 11:28:48 -0800 (PST):

> Back to Emacs, it does use lisp internally and you can use the Emacs Lisp
> to customize and extend what it does. But most uses of Emacs don't actually
> require lisp to do. And Emacs lisp has some quirks that make it not the best
> dialect of lisp to learn.

If your objection was to dynamic binding by default, it is no longer
valid. Bader's lexical binding hack has come a long way and now emacs
even compiles to native code with gcc-jit. And it's not just lexical
binding. emacs has crawled and clawed its way halfway to being the
wannabe Common-Lisp (with Common-Lisp incompatible functions in the
"cl-" namespace, with half assed buggy implementaions of generics,
structs, systems generalized places etc. you can have almost all of your
common cl-idioms in emacs albeit in a syntactically incompatible way.

> Depending on what you want to do, I would suggest starting with either
> Common Lisp (several implementations available) or Scheme (likewise
> several implementations available). Some of these will come with graphical
> interfaces and perhaps more familiar editing interfaces than what you
> would find with Emacs (even though I am a big fan and use Emacs in
> my daily work).

On 2022-01-26, Tom Russ <taruss@google.com> wrote:
>
> Great.
> We're generally really big fans here.
>
> But be forewarned, that lisp is quite different from a lot of other programming
> languages, so depending on your larger objectives this may or may not be the
> best choice. But it does expose you to a lot of good ideas that can be applied
> in other languages. But the syntax (surface form) is very different.
>
> On the plus side, it is (can be) an interactive language, which can help a lot in
> trying things out. There is a lot lower overhead to getting started.
>

Thanks! I'm mostly a non-programmer for all respects and purposes. I've
made my own bash scripts from time to time but nothing `too-complex'.
Learning a programming language has been something that I've wanted to
do since I was a kid but for some reason things haven't stuck with me. I
don't if I'm just not paying attention enough or if there's just not
enough pressure for me to learn.

>
> I don't think so.
>
> Emacs as an application is a text editor and it presents a user interface
> for editing text (as opposed to a word processor). So you would need to
> initially learn how to use the program and that doesn't require or even
> really expose you to any lisp code.
>
> It's sort of like how PhotoShop plug-ins are written in C++, but you wouldn't
> see that if you tried using Photoshop.
>
> Back to Emacs, it does use lisp internally and you can use the Emacs Lisp
> to customize and extend what it does. But most uses of Emacs don't actually
> require lisp to do. And Emacs lisp has some quirks that make it not the best
> dialect of lisp to learn.
>
> Depending on what you want to do, I would suggest starting with either
> Common Lisp (several implementations available) or Scheme (likewise
> several implementations available). Some of these will come with graphical
> interfaces and perhaps more familiar editing interfaces than what you
> would find with Emacs (even though I am a big fan and use Emacs in
> my daily work).
>

Thanks for the advice. I mostly chose emacs because I was already
familiar with ``esoteric'' text editors. I've been using vim for a good
few years already but I've shyed away from emacs mostly because I've
learned how to use vim.

But my `brilliant' head came up with the idea that maybe I could learn a
programming language while using a program. So it doesn't feel like I'm
going through it academically(?) I had a hard time getting things to
stick when I'm just reading programming idioms and concepts so I figured
that maybe I can learn in a more practical way.

Either way, I will look up Common Lisp and Scheme and think about it
further.

>
> There are a number of introductory books that have been produced over the
> years. It doesn't matter if some of them are years old, as Common Lisp hasn't
> changed in a while (although some libraries for doing things have).
>
> You could try searching this group or doing a web search for "Learning Lisp".
> (I unfortunately don't have time to track down the references right at the moment.)

Thanks! I will look this up.

--
Give them an inch and they will take a mile.
--
gemini://rtr.kalayaan.xyz

rtr <rtr@nospam.invalid> writes:

> On 2022-01-26, Tom Russ <taruss@google.com> wrote:
>>
>> On the plus side, it is (can be) an interactive language, which can
>> help a lot in trying things out. There is a lot lower overhead to
>> getting started.
>>
>
> Thanks! I'm mostly a non-programmer for all respects and
> purposes. I've made my own bash scripts from time to time but nothing
> `too-complex'.

To capitalize on Tom's valid point: If you have tinkered around in the
shell (perhaps adding pipes to pipes to filter ASCII output according to
your wishes), then you will surely appreciate the rather close feedback
loop that Lisp provides with the REPL (Read Eval Print Loop). This
"programming prompt" really resonated with me.

>> Back to Emacs, it does use lisp internally and you can use the Emacs
>> Lisp to customize and extend what it does. But most uses of Emacs
>> don't actually require lisp to do. And Emacs lisp has some quirks
>> that make it not the best dialect of lisp to learn.

Again Tom is right here, but I recommend not to get distracted by "holy
wars" about the "right" Lisp to use (these wars can be fought as
fiercely as those over "emacs versus vi"), but rather get going. Any
Lisp is very different from more mainstream languages, so the fine print
is IMHO something to worry about later (I did, and I am now on the
Common Lisp train).

>> Depending on what you want to do, I would suggest starting with
>> either Common Lisp (several implementations available) or Scheme
>> (likewise several implementations available). Some of these will come
>> with graphical interfaces and perhaps more familiar editing
>> interfaces than what you would find with Emacs (even though I am a
>> big fan and use Emacs in my daily work).
>
> But my `brilliant' head came up with the idea that maybe I could learn
> a programming language while using a program. So it doesn't feel like
> I'm going through it academically(?) I had a hard time getting things
> to stick when I'm just reading programming idioms and concepts so I
> figured that maybe I can learn in a more practical way.

Yes, I understand, and while it is not necessary for daily work (as Tom
pointed out correctly), I liked to understand more about the advanced
tweaking that Emacs Lisp allows.

> Either way, I will look up Common Lisp and Scheme and think about it
> further.

Maybe you should get Portacle (https://portacle.github.io/), which is a
pre-packaged Emacs with a fully configured Common Lisp installation
included.

>> There are a number of introductory books that have been produced over
>> the years. It doesn't matter if some of them are years old, as Common
>> Lisp hasn't changed in a while (although some libraries for doing
>> things have).
>>
>> You could try searching this group or doing a web search for
>> "Learning Lisp". (I unfortunately don't have time to track down the
>> references right at the moment.)
>
> Thanks! I will look this up.

I started out with

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/book.pdf

and then

https://gigamonkeys.com/book/

The first is really a gentle, moderately paced introduction while the
latter is slightly more compressed and perhaps more aimed at people who
already know programming in general. Both are great.

THE classic for Scheme is

https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/index.html

but this is tough going requiring quite a solid theoretical/mathematical
background.

Best regards

Axel

On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 08:20:35 -0000 (UTC)
rtr <rtr@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> Thanks! I'm mostly a non-programmer for all respects and purposes. I've
> made my own bash scripts from time to time but nothing `too-complex'.
> Learning a programming language has been something that I've wanted to
> do since I was a kid but for some reason things haven't stuck with me. I
> don't if I'm just not paying attention enough or if there's just not
> enough pressure for me to learn.

Since you already know Bash then you know at least 1 programming language. So
I take it you want to learn an Nth programming language for some value of N
greater than 1. When your earlier posts in the thread said "non-programmer"
I thought you meant that you haven't done any programming at all. In that case
"Lisp , 3rd edition" by Winston and Horn would be a good choice because it
assumes 0 programming experience but moves on to advanced stuff regarding
Common Lisp. It does leave large parts of the language unexplored though.

> Thanks for the advice. I mostly chose emacs because I was already
> familiar with ``esoteric'' text editors. I've been using vim for a good
> few years already but I've shyed away from emacs mostly because I've
> learned how to use vim.
>
> But my `brilliant' head came up with the idea that maybe I could learn a
> programming language while using a program. So it doesn't feel like I'm
> going through it academically(?) I had a hard time getting things to
> stick when I'm just reading programming idioms and concepts so I figured
> that maybe I can learn in a more practical way.

Note that vim comes with its own programming language , vimscript .I have
written a lot of code in vimscript and I find it very pleasant to programme
in. It's not a Lisp though.

> Either way, I will look up Common Lisp and Scheme and think about it
> further.

See also http://www.nongnu.org/txr/ by Kaz Kylheku who occasionally posts
here. I have only read parts of the documentation rather than used it but
it has many nice ideas borrowed from both Common Lisp and Scheme. The
downside is that you would be using a language created and implemented by
a single person.

--
vlaho.ninja/prog

On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 13:07:15 +0100
Axel Reichert <mail@axel-reichert.de> wrote:
> I started out with
>
> https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/book.pdf
>
> and then
>
> https://gigamonkeys.com/book/
>
> The first is really a gentle, moderately paced introduction while the
> latter is slightly more compressed and perhaps more aimed at people who
> already know programming in general. Both are great.

For anyone who wants to financially support the Common Lisp ecosystem , I
note that both books are in print and can be bought new :

Common LISP: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation
by Touretzky, David S.
ISBN 13 9780486498201

Practical Common Lisp
by Peter Seibel
ISBN 13 9781430242901

I haven't read the first. I can recommend the second (for those with some
programming experience) although it uses LOOP too much for my taste and only
casually mentions the DEFSTRUCT functionality.

Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes:

> On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 08:20:35 -0000 (UTC)
> rtr <rtr@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>> Thanks! I'm mostly a non-programmer for all respects and purposes. I've
>> made my own bash scripts from time to time but nothing `too-complex'.
>> Learning a programming language has been something that I've wanted to
>> do since I was a kid but for some reason things haven't stuck with me. I
>> don't if I'm just not paying attention enough or if there's just not
>> enough pressure for me to learn.
>
> Since you already know Bash then you know at least 1 programming language. So
> I take it you want to learn an Nth programming language for some value of N
> greater than 1. When your earlier posts in the thread said "non-programmer"
> I thought you meant that you haven't done any programming at all. In that case
> "Lisp , 3rd edition" by Winston and Horn would be a good choice because it
> assumes 0 programming experience but moves on to advanced stuff regarding
> Common Lisp. It does leave large parts of the language unexplored though.
>

Thanks! Yeah, I guess you can consider that I want to learn another
language. With regards to being a ``non-programmer'', I meant it in a
sense that I haven't had any formal training in advanced mathematics or
computer science stuff. For all intents and purposes I'm just a hobbyist
that really like tinkering with software and, occasionally, hardware.

>> Thanks for the advice. I mostly chose emacs because I was already
>> familiar with ``esoteric'' text editors. I've been using vim for a good
>> few years already but I've shyed away from emacs mostly because I've
>> learned how to use vim.
>>
>> But my `brilliant' head came up with the idea that maybe I could learn a
>> programming language while using a program. So it doesn't feel like I'm
>> going through it academically(?) I had a hard time getting things to
>> stick when I'm just reading programming idioms and concepts so I figured
>> that maybe I can learn in a more practical way.
>
> Note that vim comes with its own programming language , vimscript .I have
> written a lot of code in vimscript and I find it very pleasant to programme
> in. It's not a Lisp though.
>

Ah yes! I forgot vimscript is a thing. I think I only encountered it
once when I was messing around with keybindings in vim. It never really
occurred to me that it's a full blown programming language, that's interesting.

>> Either way, I will look up Common Lisp and Scheme and think about it
>> further.
>
> See also http://www.nongnu.org/txr/ by Kaz Kylheku who occasionally posts
> here. I have only read parts of the documentation rather than used it but
> it has many nice ideas borrowed from both Common Lisp and Scheme. The
> downside is that you would be using a language created and implemented by
> a single person.

Thanks! I will check this out.

--
Give them an inch and they will take a mile.
--
gemini://rtr.kalayaan.xyz