According to the MIT textbook it is but I guess Cranium has something else in his cranium about it.

Well, he's right in that it's NOT Lisp. It's different than the original Lisp from 1959. But I don't know if Scheme is the dialect you want to go with. Some people on this thread have already recommended Common Lisp, which is the second predominant dialect of Lisp. I guess it's your choice. I will have some experience with Scheme come September.

Alex Brinister

Well Cranium should be smart enough to know that we are in 2012.

You're going to have to defend this, Richard.

According to Wikipedia (the Fount Of All Knowledge ):

Geting advice from people that call Scheme and Lisp 2 seperate languages and also that python is a scripting language...
also some dufus walts in recommending ruby and C++. 2 Langs I don't want to even touch.

But I do give credit to some other valuable advice that was given here.

As for why not Common Lisp? Because I am just starting... thats why. Simplicity, hence Scheme.

The reason I choose Scheme over Python is not because its more comonly used. Obviously Python wins in that area. Especially when it comes to job market. But because of my interest in Computer Science. Similar to reason why I choose Slackware not for desktop tools but for study. Python and Scheme are 2 great languages for me.

I respect C very much. As much as people try to condemn it as an old language it is a great language imo memory management is always necessary for max efficiency. I was planning on an intro to C afterwards. I don't find Go as attractive as C since I am not into Object Oriented Langs too much even though Rob Pike and Ken Thompson are creating it. However I do see it as a huge advantage over Java syntax from what I read.

python is great for completeness and lisp is pure functional, "the lack of syntax" thing can be thought of elegant

so i recommend lisp first, then python, even if you think you will find python is so great that you could care less about the others

the background of the Ruby/C++ recommendation from me was that functional programming parts works with ruby somehow better than with python
alt least for me
and it also supports a lot of other programming pardigmen, so you could combine the lisp and python stuff into 1.
plus it is wildly used and allows you to become productive and there is also a job market.
and spending time with c or c++ is never wrong, even if thos 2 are long time targets, compared with python or ruby

thought it would be worth to mention and you may want to think about that if you have not done it so far.
sorry for disturbing your thread

sorry for being rude as its a common trait of mine. But in all reality I choose my langs for a purpose. No lang is really that much better then others (aalthough I disagree with my own statement.). Its just that they are used for different ways.

In that they use prefix notation and parens, yeah.


C++ is a dialect of C. Try compiling a random C++ program with a C compiler and see how far that goes.

I know where *your* cranium is.

Oh? You think the two languages are the same? Have you actually programmed in both of them?

I have.

Which one? Common Lisp or Scheme Lisp?

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