Re: Help with Learning Programming and LISP

[John Soo]

Hi Raghav!

>  I would like to learn programming starting with LISP

Great! Lisp is probably the best language to start with! 

Lisp books also rank among the best introductory materials to programming. I 
highly recommend these two:

- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (often called SICP)

This uses a dialect of scheme, so you can do the exercises without much 
translation using guile or racket. It touches on many aspects of computer 
science and I think is closest to the swiss-army knife you deacribed. There are 
also excellent lectures freely available on YouTube by the authors.

- Land of Lisp

This is an introduction to Common Lisp. I am less familiar with it, but it 
always comes highly recommended as a fun introduction to programming by writing 
simple games. If I’m not mistaken, it may be a little more pragmatic than SICP. 

Hope that helps and happy hacking!

- John