brandelune / nipel

New Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp

nipel

New Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp

This New Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp intends to cover the same ground as Robert Chassell's, but in a more readable and fun way. It's also showing how much I've progressed so far in my learning of Emacs Lisp...

The document is an org-mode file that is not intended to be read here, as you'll see if you try. It's ugly on GitHub. I'm keeping it in org-mode because I'm learning how to be oganised in Emacs, which I'm using as the writing tool for this document, but the end format would ideally be texinfo or suchlike.

I've tried to learn Lisp in many forms for a long time. I was super excited when Practical Common Lisp was released, ordered it as soon as it was published, but did not go further than the first few dozen pages. Same with Graham's Ansi Common Lisp, or even SICP. I started being interested in Lisp because of Emacs and all those books really got me further interested in the matter.

This "nipel" thing started when I started to find Chassell's style way too verbose for the 21st century when basic introductions to programming concepts are all over the web. I felt that the style was actually keeping me from learning. So I started taking notes on the book, and then I wrote a few drafts on paper, and then I decided to put some order to my drafts on the machine, etc.

I love the way Ansi Common Lisp and SICP start. But the former is not an introductory text and the later is too focused on maths. So I'm looking for a way to write that makes it look as simple as ACL does, makes it looks as smartly focused on text as SICP is for numbers, and even though I probably won't manage to make is as fun as Land of Lisp or as practical as Practical Common Lisp, those are also 2 of my targets.

If you want to help, go ahead. I need comments on what I wrote already and maybe a few hints about the parts to come. But I won't write them before I've actually gone through the corresponding parts in Chassell's text...