Lisp in 2025: A Practical Guide to the One True Programming Language

Table of Contents

Part I: The Foundation

Chapter 1: Introduction - The Eternal Language

  • Why Lisp Still Matters in 2025
  • The Power of Homoiconicity
  • What You’ll Learn in This Book
  • A Quick Taste of Lisp

Chapter 2: The Lisp Family Tree

  • From McCarthy’s Original Vision (1958)
  • The Great Schism: Common Lisp vs Scheme
  • The Modern Branches: Clojure, Racket, and Beyond
  • Understanding S-expressions

Part II: The Classical Lisps

Chapter 3: Common Lisp - The Industrial Strength Lisp

  • Setting Up SBCL and Quicklisp
  • CLOS: The Most Powerful Object System You’ve Never Used
  • Practical Common Lisp Projects
  • When to Choose Common Lisp

Chapter 4: Scheme - The Academic Beauty

  • Minimalism as a Feature
  • Setting Up Racket and Guile
  • Continuations and Tail Call Optimization
  • Educational Excellence

Part III: The Practical Lisps

Chapter 5: Emacs Lisp - Your Editor is a Lisp Machine

  • Living Inside a Lisp REPL
  • Configuring Emacs from Scratch
  • Writing Your Own Modes and Packages
  • The Joy of Interactive Development

Chapter 6: Clojure - The Modern Lisp

  • The JVM Advantage
  • Immutability by Default
  • Rich Hickey’s Philosophy
  • Building Production Systems
  • The REPL-Driven Development Workflow

Chapter 7: ClojureScript - Lisp in the Browser

  • One Language, Multiple Platforms
  • React and Reagent
  • Shadow-cljs and Modern Tooling
  • Building Full-Stack Applications

Part IV: Practical Mastery

Chapter 8: Setting Up Your Development Environment

  • The Ultimate Lisp Development Setup
  • Paredit and Structural Editing
  • REPL Integration Across Lisps
  • Debugging and Profiling Tools

Chapter 9: Practical Projects Across Lisps

  • Building a DSL in Each Lisp
  • Web Services: From Common Lisp to Clojure
  • Data Processing Pipelines
  • Cross-Lisp Code Sharing

Chapter 10: The Future of Lisp

  • Why Lisp Keeps Coming Back
  • New Lisps on the Horizon
  • The Eternal Relevance of S-expressions
  • Your Journey Forward

Appendices

Appendix A: Quick Reference - Syntax Comparison Appendix B: Resources and Communities Appendix C: The Lisp Enlightenment Path