I first read about the legendary lisp macros in Paul Graham’s essay, and since then my whole journey of learning lisp has been driven by a desire to fully understand the power of macros.
If you have not heard about the power of lisp macros, here’s a quote from one of the creators of Scheme (a lisp) that captures the essence of this power.
If you give someone Fortran, he has Fortran....
Defining recursion in terms of itself is an old joke among programmers. Despite the fact that it frustrates a lot of new-comers, we don’t change it. I like to define recursion as “Iteration for the cool kids”. I don’t mean this in a snobbish, let-us-exclude-the-for-loopers kinda way, but rather in a tone of appreciation. Recursion is an elegant way of doing things. Recursive alogrithms are concise, have less noise and have immutability baked in (always a plus)....
Welcome, young lisper. I see you have heard the summons from the mystical forces. Prepare yourself for a journey like no other. Your view of programming shall change, and change for the better. You must shed your past beliefs and practices. This is a new path, one that bears little resemblance to the paths you have trodden before. And that is a good thing.
Initiation rites You have two options - either use an online one-click setup or bite the bullet and install clojure and other tools on your local machine....