Learning Common LISP: Reading list

I’ve decided to try and learn Common LISP. Don’t ask me why, but I think it is because the little I’ve read about it seems interesting. At the very least this journey should give me a better understanding of programming paradigms, especially functional programming. I’m used to the imperative way of programming which in most of the projects and lessons I’ve had has been the standard way to do things.

EDIT: It’s been a while since I started this section, and I stumbled across a post on news.ycombinator.com that resonated with me:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32630842

In this section I will present a list of material that I’m using for teaching myself Common LISP. I would definitely start with book number one and online resource number three!

List of books:

  1. “Common LISP: a gentle introduction to symbolic computation” – David S. Touretzky (read)
  2. “Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming” – Peter Norvig (started on, but way over my head still)
  3. “Functional Programming Through Lambda Calculus” – Greg Michaelson (started on, but a bit on the heavy side)
  4. “Software design for flexibility: how to avoid programming yourself into a corner” – Chris Hanson, Gerald Jay Sussmann (started on, but a bit hard to keep up with the examples still)

Here’s a list of online resources on Common LISP:

  1. Running Lisp in Production | Grammarly Engineering Blog
  2. Do you know where Lisp is used nowadays?
  3. A road to common lisp
  4. www.common-lisp.net
  5. Lisp for microcontrollers

Let’s see where this takes me!

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