LISP
I learned LISP in college. I did not like it. My only actual memory of it was that it involved lots of parenthesis and recursion. Today I was thinking about the suggestion during our last academic day at Hackbright that for our next language, we should try a lower level language.
In the past, I have greeted any talk of LISP with a childish distaste. However, it dawned on me that perhaps, somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain, I might remember more about LISP. Plus, if I am going to learn a lower level language, wouldn’t it be nice to learn something I had some form of prior knowledge in?
So, I gave it a shot and the result was surprising. I not only liked LISP, but it was comforting and oddly familiar. LISP has this innate logic that makes a lot of since. I started out by installing common LISP and going over some basic functions.
Then, I moved on to a different set of tutorials. Recursion seemed almost natural. While it is still day one and too early to tell, the fact that I was even able to write two (small) recursive functions on day one is a good sign.
A little practice each day will hopefully go a long way. Stay tuned.
Javascript
It has been a while since I have done anything in Javascript. Most of my focus has been on Python. I realized that I needed to beef up a bit on Javascript. So, I went through one of the modules on Code Academy. I am not focusing on the web side of Javascript so much, but instead more on the backend/functional side.
My hope is to review a lot of the concepts in Javascript like classes and objects, arrays, functions, and more. We didn’t spend as much time on these concepts at Hackbright. Instead, we focused more on using Javascript and related libraries (Jquery, AJAX) for front-end web development.
Overall
This week starts my first post-Hackbright week. I am excited about the possibilities – including but not limited too, getting a good night’s sleep!
michdcode 