Shake wrote:I started teaching myself Lisp just this week, and I've hit my first major hurdle: I can't seem to find an interpreter/compiler that works for me. I have tried four of them so far, and I'm assuming they're four of the more popular ones. I'm not sure. I have tried the following interpreters:
Poplog (w/ Lisp language loaded)
Ufasoft Lisp Studio
GNU CLisp (Windows version. It's a generic name, but this is the one w/ a Menorah as its launch icon)
Visual Lisp for AutoCAD (I believe this one interprets AutoLISP, a dialect of Lisp that CAD uses, not sure though)
I have to admit that when I read your first post I was half-convinced that you were joking. Those are some obscure implementations, except for clisp, and autolisp iff you are an autocad user. I would like to put in a word of defense for poplog though. It was my first CL (albeit a cltl1 CL), and it's pretty usable once you get the hang of it. I wouldn't ever recommend it as a lisp environment for someone trying to learn CL, but I have fond memories of it, and fonder memories of Pop. And it's pretty unrivaled as a combined environment for scheme, CLTL1 CL, pop-11 and.. err.. prolog maybe? It's been a while.
If the only thing you're interested in doing is autocad work then I think you might do best to just concentrate on autolisp. If you're interested in programming in general- well, scheme might well be a good choice, but if you find CL more to your liking I'd say that if you are already familiar with Linux and Emacs SBCL+Slime ought to be considered the default for beginners. If you're not a Linux+Emacs user then you'll probably wind up frustrated if you try to pick all three things up at once. In that case I think that the Lispworks trial edition + Edi Weitz's starter pack is the easiest thing to do under windows. It has a limited heap size, and it quits every five hours, but the heap limit is pretty generous. Certainly generous enough to let you learn CL.