I've written some simple programs in Common Lisp and I agree that pico hues
more to the original spirit of McCarthy in it's simplicity and power. I say
learn pico first then you probably won't need CL ;-)
All that said, it's hard for newbies to learn. I don't expect it to be easy.
I don't think Picolisp needs to be accessible to everyone. The masses choose
Java, etc. I'm not the smartest guy around, but I'm conversant with perl,
drupal, php, bash, linux and run my own Debian systems. Lispthink is different
and picolispthink is differenter.
I think there could be more tutorials to ease the learning curve for beginning
picolisp learners. Picolisp is a dense and powerful language. The standard
tutorial is likewise dense: http://software-lab.de/doc/tut.html. It covers
some of the basics and touches on things like pilog which is similar to prolog
which is a language unto itself!
I've found the rosetta code examples occasionally helpful and the 99 problems
to be to be good for basics http://picolisp.com/wiki/?99problems. Debian does
a great job of comments in config files, etc. I think pages like
http://picolisp.com/wiki/?99p27 (the solution to problem 27) would be much more
helpful if they were commented. People say good programmers aren't good at
documentation: it bores them. They wrote the code, solved the problem and want
to move on to the next challenge. I think in general picolisp programmers are
good programmers ;-)
I'd suggest reading the standard tutorial first to figure out the basics of
interacting with picolisp and the REPL. If you want to grok the basics
thoroughly, I think you then start with baby steps on the 99 problems. The 99
problems are not sexy, but they're great for foundational knowledge and lispy
concepts.
Wondering what others suggest for a syllabus or roadmap. I get the "pick a project
and dive in" recommendation, but for PL newbs that's a deep dive (with possible
hidden rocks beneath the surface!). Like the OP, I'm trying to learn PicoLisp.
Apologies if this an answer/question. Thanx for any insight or suggestions.
On Wed, Jun 08, 2016 at 12:52:56PM +0000, Jon Kleiser wrote:
If you have no Lisp background, and what you want to learn is PicoLisp, then I
don’t think learning Common Lisp first will be any advantage. I believe Common
Lisp differs quite a bit from PicoLisp.
If you have experience with some other popular language X, then you can compare
the Rosetta Code solutions for X and PicoLisp,
http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:PicoLisp.
You should also study this tutorial http://software-lab.de/doc/tut.html, and
when you have questions, use this mail list, or the IRC channel,
irc://irc.freenode.net/picolisp.
To keep yourself motivated, I think it’s smart to pick a nice little task (not
too complicated) that you want to solve, using PicoLisp. Go for it!
/Jon
On 8. Jun, 2016, at 14:18, Jakob Eriksson <ja...@aurorasystems.eu> wrote:
It's more like Common Lisp is a derivative of PicoLisp, seriously. :-) So I'd
go for pico first, it's easier to understand.
8 juni 2016 kl. 14:08 skrev Lawrence Bottorff <borg...@gmail.com>:
So, what would the best way to learn picolisp be for a total beginner? It might
seem like you should just bite the bullet and learn regular Common Lisp first,
then start learning picolisp. That is, you should know all the capabilities of
Lisp before you try to learn a derivative Lisp. Is this true?
LB
--
Joe Golden
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