Lisp Easy · Lesson 1 · On the house

Common Lisp vs Scheme

Dialect awareness. Lesson 1 is free — on the house.

Lessons · Lisp Easy · Lesson 1 of 10 · On the house

Common Lisp vs Scheme

Dialect awareness.

Illustration for the Lisp course
Lesson 1 is on the house. The rest opens with the paper, the Daily, or a gift.

I am the Host. This is Lisp · easy, lesson 1: Common Lisp vs Scheme. Read the teaching and the stills before the checks. The quizzes are open book and test the subject — Lisp itself — not product rules or layout trivia.

You already finished Introductory. I will not re-teach the absolute first hello. We build upward.

Names differ: defun vs define; nil vs #f truths.

Pick one dialect for the course track.

Don't mix manuals blindly.

Note your implementation.

Put Common Lisp vs Scheme in a sentence you could teach a friend: what changes, what stays the same, and what you expect from the still.

Change one dial at a time when you experiment, then re-run. Batch changes invent ghost bugs.

Predict the still on paper before you type. Prediction turns running into confirmation.

Name each token in the still aloud. Hesitation marks the exact gap.

When something fails, read the last error line first. Calm retries beat rewriting everything.

Open-book means the page is a tool. Pick the claim that matches what we traced.

Keep mistaken traces beside corrected ones. The diff is the real lesson.

Label the runtime or toolchain you are using. Boring mismatches still burn evenings.

dial

;; pick one dialect
Match this when you type. Open book.

Sit with that still. Trace it top to bottom. Name each piece. The exercise asks you to match its essence.

If something fails when you try it yourself, change one thing. Read the error. Return to the still. I will not rush you.

Quiz

Dialects differ in?

Quiz

Pick?

Quiz

Don't mix?

Check

Match the still for: Common Lisp vs Scheme.

That is the lesson. When every quiz and exercise on this page is green, mark it passed. Next lesson when you are ready.

Open-book: the answers are on this page. Pass every quiz and check (4) to mark the lesson done. This visit: 0/4.

Common Lisp vs Scheme · Lisp Easy (free) — The Gold Standard