Re: Cool and Useful LISP for the .emacs file

[Kai Grossjohann]

"Jody M. Klymak" <jklymak@coas.oregonstate.edu> writes:

> I personally find lisp quite difficult.  The opportunities to code in
> it are few and far enough between, and the syntax so different from
> any other modern language, that I have a one-day overhead just to
> spool up to the point where I can do even the simplest thing.

I guess it's not that bad.  Lisp, especially the Emacs Lisp dialect,
is quite a small language.  It can be learned quickly.  Of course,
actually using Emacs Lisp requires you to also learn the "standard
library", which is really huge.  But once you have learned the basic
language, you never have to struggle with the syntax again.  And in
Lisp, there is not much syntax to speak of.

And I find that after not using Emacs Lisp for a while, I just need
the confidence to think that the standard library function is already
there -- then a bit of persistence with M-x apropos RET or index
search in the info file will get me there ;-)

Kai