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Should beginners learn Lisp in 2023?
Executive summary
Learning Lisp today is practical as a study tool and for niche production uses: multiple 2025 guides, tutorials and course roundups show active learning resources for Common Lisp, Scheme, Racket and Emacs Lisp [1] [2]. Community hubs and curated resource lists say Lisp remains maintainable and useful for rapid prototyping, macros, REPL-driven development and editor automation — though coverage emphasizes learning value and niche ecosystems rather than mass-market hiring demand [3] [4] [5].
1. Why people still recommend Lisp: the “thinking tool” argument
Advocates and community sites stress that Lisp is prized not only for production use but for changing how you think about programming: common-lisp.net quotes users who say learning Lisp is a “profound enlightenment” that improves programming in other languages [3]. FreeCodeCamp’s beginner course frames Common Lisp as a way to master REPL workflows, macros and code-as-data — fundamentals that illuminate modern languages and paradigms influenced by Lisp [5]. Practical guides and curated lists (GitHub “awesome” lists, tutorials) further promote the language as an educational investment that yields transferable skill in abstraction and metaprogramming [4] [6].
2. Availability of learning material and tooling in 2025
There is abundant, up-to-date learning material: Class Central and other aggregators list dozens of courses and tutorials across Lisp dialects [1] [2]. Hands-on resources — from “Learn in Y Minutes” references to beginner-friendly books and Koans — make the entry path concrete and supported [7] [4]. Tooling commentary notes that Common Lisp tooling has been actively discussed in 2025 posts about environments, ports like Portacle and integrations such as Jupyter kernels, though some users report friction with certain native libraries or bindings [8] [9].
3. Practical production use: niche but real
Reporting and project guides present Lisp as “quietly running mission-critical systems” and powering long-lived tooling like editors (Emacs) and domain-specific systems [10]. Community posts argue Common Lisp can combine high-level rapid development and optimized code paths, with libraries and tools enabling extension without changing the language [11]. However, available sources emphasize Lisp’s strengths in specific domains (editor customization, symbolic computation, DSLs) rather than broad mainstream web/mobile stacks [10] [11].
4. Dialect choices and what each teaches you
Resources survey multiple dialects — Common Lisp, Scheme/Racket, Emacs Lisp and Clojure — and recommend choosing based on goals: Common Lisp for general-purpose systems and rich CLOS, Racket for language experimentation and teaching, Emacs Lisp for editor automation, and Clojure when JVM interop is important [10] [1]. Aggregators and curated lists present tracks and books tailored to beginners for each dialect, allowing learners to align dialect with intended use cases [1] [4].
5. Hiring market and job prospects — what the sources say (and don’t)
Available sources emphasize learning value, tooling and niche production use, but they do not provide systematic job-market statistics or concrete hiring data for 2023–2025; Class Central and community write-ups focus on education and projects rather than employment numbers [2] [1]. Not found in current reporting: a clear, sourced claim that learning Lisp guarantees wider employment opportunities in mainstream tech. Community anecdotes and satire pieces exist but do not substitute for labor-market evidence [12].
6. Trade-offs for beginners: cognitive payoff vs. ecosystem size
The reporting frames Lisp as high payoff for conceptual clarity and metaprogramming skills, but also implies trade-offs: smaller mainstream ecosystems and occasional tooling rough edges [3] [9]. Guides recommend practical steps — pick a dialect, use a curated learning path (books, koans, REPL-driven exercises) and join community hubs to overcome friction [4] [8]. These resources argue the time cost is defensible if your primary goal is to become a better programmer or to work in the niches where Lisp excels [3] [5].
7. Bottom line and actionable advice
If your priority is conceptual depth, language design, editor automation or certain legacy/niche systems, learning Lisp today is well supported by modern tutorials, tooling notes and active communities [1] [10] [4]. If your primary goal is immediate, high-volume mainstream job marketability, available sources do not present evidence that Lisp is a top hiring bet — choose a dialect aligned with your goals and follow curated beginner tracks and tools [2] [8].