A Road to Lisp: Which Lisp
This article serves as a guide for beginners interested in learning Lisp, explaining that it is a family of dialects rather than a single language. It highlights the benefits of learning the fundamental concepts of Lisp regardless of the specific dialect chosen.
Why it matters
It helps demystify the Lisp ecosystem for new programmers, encouraging the adoption of functional programming paradigms.
Most programming languages evolve as a single language. Python, Java, Javascript, C++, have new versions and standards, multiple implementations, but they still remain the same language. C and C++ can be compiled with GCC or Clang, Python can be compiled with CPython or PyPy, the same JavaScript runs in both Firefox and Chrome, and Java programs can run on JVM or GraalVM.
The Wikipedia page lists more than 20 different dialects , which means there are many variations to choose from. That’s because Lisp is a family of programming languages . They share the same fundamental syntax but differ in their operators, semantics, standard libraries, and language capabilities.
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