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Re: Resources to learn common lisp?

From tpeplt <tpeplt@gmail.com>
Newsgroups comp.lang.lisp
Subject Re: Resources to learn common lisp?
Date 2026-02-20 17:44 -0500
Organization A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID <87seavm3wj.fsf@gmail.com> (permalink)
References <874inbqdz7.fsf@mariorosell.es>

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Mario Rosell <mario@mariorosell.es> writes:

> Hello everyone!
>
> I want to learn Common Lisp, but I don't really know what resources to
> use.
>
> What did you all use to learn? Is that even relevant? Is this newsgroup
> active?
>
> Thanks for everyone in advice

A place where you can start is with David S. Touretzky’s
book "COMMON LISP: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic
Computation", which Carnegie-Mellon University has made
available for download as a PDF file:

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

In addition to the text that teaches you Common Lisp, it
includes exercises, answers to the exercises, and a glossary
to get the definitions of terms.

Although you can read the book, you will want to be able to
evaluate expressions both to practice and the confirm that
you understand what you are doing.  Some readers of this
group might have a Lisp that they will recommend.  I
recommend that you start by installing GNU Emacs on your
computer.  It is a text editor that comes with its own Lisp,
called Emacs Lisp, that is similar enough to Common Lisp
that you will be able to complete many of the exercises
without installing a Lisp.  Over decades, Emacs has been
developed so that it can be used as an environment that is
highly-optimized for Lisp programming, including Scheme and
Common Lisp.

If you have not used Emacs and are able to install it, then
you will want to look carefully the first time that you
start running it.  You should see the following two links:

   Emacs Tutorial
   Emacs Guided Tour

The tutorial gets you started on using Emacs and the guided
tour shows you some of the capabilities that the editor.
The guided tour uses one of Emacs’s built-in web browsers to
download into the editor a web page with text and images to
give the tour.

You should also read the built-in manual titled "Introduction
to Emacs Lisp", which is available inside Emacs via its
menu:

   menu -> Help -> More Manuals -> Introduction to Emacs Lisp

You might consider reading this (much smaller) book BEFORE
reading "Gentle Intro." because it will quickly give you an
idea of whether you want to learn Lisp.

-- 
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.
- Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parliament of Birds.

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Thread

Resources to learn common lisp? Mario Rosell <mario@mariorosell.es> - 2026-02-20 22:53 +0100
  Re: Resources to learn common lisp? Ben Bacarisse <ben@bsb.me.uk> - 2026-02-20 22:00 +0000
    Re: Resources to learn common lisp? Mario Rosell <mario@mariorosell.es> - 2026-02-21 12:25 +0100
      Re: Resources to learn common lisp? Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2026-02-21 10:24 -0500
      Re: Resources to learn common lisp? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-02-21 21:30 +0000
        Re: Resources to learn common lisp? Mario Rosell <mario@mariorosell.es> - 2026-02-22 01:08 +0100
          Re: Resources to learn common lisp? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-02-22 04:59 +0000
            Re: Resources to learn common lisp? Madhu <enometh@meer.net> - 2026-02-22 10:59 +0530
              Re: Resources to learn common lisp? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-02-22 21:48 +0000
  Re: Resources to learn common lisp? tpeplt <tpeplt@gmail.com> - 2026-02-20 17:44 -0500
    Re: Resources to learn common lisp? Mario Rosell <mario@mariorosell.es> - 2026-02-21 12:30 +0100
  Re: Resources to learn common lisp? ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) - 2026-02-20 23:50 +0000
    Re: Resources to learn common lisp? ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) - 2026-02-21 00:24 +0000
      Re: Resources to learn common lisp? Andreas Eder <a_eder_muc@web.de> - 2026-02-21 11:36 +0100
      Re: Resources to learn common lisp? Mario Rosell <mario@mariorosell.es> - 2026-02-21 12:44 +0100
  Re: Resources to learn common lisp? steve g <sgonedes1977@gmail.com> - 2026-03-31 17:47 -0400
    Re: Resources to learn common lisp? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-03-31 23:41 +0000
    Re: Resources to learn common lisp? tpeplt <tpeplt@gmail.com> - 2026-04-01 13:23 -0400
  Re: Resources to learn common lisp? Peri Didaskalou <pfd@torfree.net> - 2026-05-01 10:52 -0400
  Re: Resources to learn common lisp? Peri Didaskalou <pfd@torfree.net> - 2026-05-01 10:57 -0400
  Re: Resources to learn common lisp? Peri Didaskalou <pfd@torfree.net> - 2026-05-01 11:06 -0400

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