From Newsgroup: comp.lang.lisp

On 03/08/2026 12:42 AM, kotorifan wrote:

Am Fri, 20 Feb 2026 22:53:00 +0100 schrieb Mario Rosell:

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

For learning the basics about the language I highly recommend the book "Practical Common Lisp" by Peter Seibel. It is available for free over
here: https://gigamonkeys.com/book/ and explains the basic concepts like macros, loops, CLOS, and so on in detail. From all resources I know, this
has been the most helpful in learning CL. Other than that you should check out the Hyperspec when stuck, it's essentially something akin to man
pages, but for CL, and documents the language well. It is not really a
good beginner resource, however, for that rather read the book.

Also it does help to have a background in Emacs Lisp, which you will need anyway when dealing with SLIME/Sly, Emacs, and CL, so it's a good idea to
get acquainted with Elisp in parallel, even if your knowledge is only very rudimentary, it still helps.

-- kotorifan

After /Practical Common Lisp/, I recommend Weitz' /Common Lisp Recipes/
(2016) for some nuts and bolts knowledge that's almost essential when
using Common Lisp in production.

For some advanced, and somewhat academic knowledge, you can grab
/Programming Algorithms in Lisp/ (2021) by Vsevolod Domkin, and
/The Common Lisp Condition System/ (2020) by Michal "phoe" Herda.

And whatever you do, don't listen to the naysayers. Common Lisp is
a beautiful programming language, and just as relevant today as it
was in 1984.
--
Johann | email: invalid -> com | http://www.myrkraverk.com/blog/
I'm not from the Internet, I just work there. | via Easynews.com
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