>tldr: why should a programmer learn Lisp?
Full story: I have a TA job at my university, so I have a lot of contact with first-years. In a conversation one of the students I tutor complained about having to learn Scheme in his Programming 101 class, whining about how it's academic masturbation and how the professor won't teach a relevant language. I wanted to reply to him, to motivate him by listing a few interesting perks or some real world applications, but aside from reading the first 200 or so pages of SICP I've never worked with Scheme.
So I ask you, /b/: is Lisp really a meme? Or is there something useful hidden under the avalanche of parentheses?
So from the lack of responses I gather that Lisp is, indeed, a meme language and nobody gives a fuck about it. Oh well. Good thing I don't have to learn it then, sucks for the first-years.
All the Lisp Programers went to Lainchan.
But yeah Lisp is a prety neat Programing language.
>>51913128
if you cant program then yes.
if you can then not.
>>51913128
It's not the bet language out there, but it is pretty amazing. I think you should try and learn it, although admittedly not many people really use it nowadays. But its pretty cool.
Tl;dr Lisp is not a meme language
>>51913652
>>51913842
>>51913864
I love how so far 3 out of 3 shitposters recommend it, yet nobody gave any actual reason/application whatsoever.
>>51913888
there is no
>reason
for using lisp, its just a nice language (like haskell).
>>51913128
I'm in the exact same situation as that student, I had to learn Scheme in my intro programming course this past semester.
Having never done any functional programming before, I thought it was really interesting and I enjoyed the course a lot.
It's also nice not having to remember a billion keywords; Scheme syntax is pretty simple.
>>51913888
List is one of the hardest languages to learn and master and has one of the hardest of all programing language learning curves.
But it's a very well made language that is both efficient and powerfull.
>>51913942
>>List
Talking about scheme, some implementations are great for embedding to bigger C or C++ programs for example gimp.
Carmack is pushing scheme as scripting language for oculus rift.
http://www.lambdanative.org/
Common lisp is nice too.
It has many mature compilers that are still actively developed.
There is even new cl implementation coming that should make it easy to c++ libraries with cl.
https://drmeister.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/announcing-clasp/
Reddit was first written in lisp and there are many frameworks to do web stuff with lisp.
>>51914256
https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Basic_Scheme/
>>51914256
Lambdanative is framework for scheme that compiles to c and allows you to write programs for mobile platforms.
Carmack talking about the scheme scripting.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/racket-users/RFlh0o6l3Ls/8InN7uz-Mv4J
Lisp is popular as a scripting language, e.g. it's used in some CAD tools. Also it's the language you use to program the best text editor, emacs
>>51913128
If you want to write you're own dialect of Lisp or are into AI, then you should probably learn either Common Lisp or Scheme. It's actually interesting how you can essentially modify a dialect of Lisp (say Common Lisp) into your own personal dialect of Lisp.
>>51913128
Lisp/Scheme are rooted in academia, have been used for some pretty fucking great things (just google it?), and continue to be used by niche groups. The only reason it's unpopular is because it's too fancy for the mainstream industry.
https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/
https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/
That's just one Scheme implementation and one big piece of software written in it.
There's also Racket...
>>51913128
Lisp is as much of a meme as any other language.
It has really powerful features, some people like to use it, some people won't.
Lisp diallects unfortunately are not very popular, yet I can use the same logic to say that javascript or python are really popular yet they're some of the most awful and badly designed languages available. Argumentum ad populum is a fallacy for a reason.
Common Lisp is a language that was made to be used in professional software.
But even a much smaller language like scheme can actually be useful when you don't need all those complex features, one example is microprocessor's programming: https://github.com/SteelSeries/golisp
For example all of these companies use common lisp: http://franz.com/success/
And Clojure's adoption by the java world is also increasing.
Just give it a try
Lisp easy things like addition slightly harder, and hard things (for a first year) like recursion and function pointers trivial. It's valuable to learn just to demistify the "hard" concepts in programming, so that you're comfortable doing anything in any language.
>>51913128
When you say Lisp, you have to specify what variation you are talking about, some of them are more pure (Scheme), some of them are not as pure (CL), some of them say it is a Lisp but some would argue they are not (Clojure).
If we are talking about Scheme, then yes, it is an useless language in industry in great part because there are no libraries to do useful stuff and the language is so incredibly simple, it is a very simple language. Clojure on the other hand is much more widely used in comparison, but again it may not be the best reference of a lisp programming language
Anyway, being a mostly empiric software developer myself, and given than my shit University taught only "relevant" skills (aka the shit you need to know to be a code monkey), learning Scheme and SICP has greatly improved my skills in ways I would never have reached on my own by just following what the industry happens to like at the moment.
If I was a guy that just graduated and saw the SV bubble and saw what they are using and doing, I would definitely think I have learned is useless and that it was incredibly stupid to learn Scheme instead Ruby or Javascript, like the people you are working with, but once you have a few years of experience, you understand that languages, frameworks, libraries, that shit doesn't matter, but the way of thinking you get from learning Lisp or from studying an amazing book like SICP is timeless and applies to any meme language that happens to be popular at the time.
>>51913128
How are you a TA and yet this ignorant?
>>51916510
>(just google it?)
I ask questions on /g/ when I'd like to hear some controversial opinions. If I googled, I could very well have landed on some circlejerk Lisp forum where the last 5 Lisp programmers on Earth keep telling each other how oh-so-relevant their language still is.
So thanks to everyone, there's plenty of stuff I can work with.
>>51919521
I'm a TA for another class which has nothing to do with Scheme (or programming at all, desu). You don't have to be a genius to become a TA, you just need to know more than the students you'll be teaching, and since they're all first years it's pretty fucking easy. Acing the class last year was enough to get myself a job offer.
