 What makes Lisp hard to learn?
pchristensen: The hardest thing is the lack of a "batteries included" standard package.  There are competing implementations (which all have strengths and weaknesses) and lots of libraries (many of which are good, few of which are widely accepted as "standard").The short answer is to setup SBCL and Slime/Emacs (here's a guide I wrote: http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/installing-sbcl-em... )A previous discussion on learning Lisp: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=125766Plus another article I wrote: http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/how-to-learn-lisp/Additional resources:SLIME/Emacs cheat sheet: http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/public-beta-open-f...Watch the SLIME movie (http://www.guba.com/watch/3000054867 ) and read my notes on it (http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/reference-for-the-... )EDIT:  To avoid the setup hassle entirely, try Thnake (http://jasonfruit.com/thnake/ ) - a Linux liveCD with SBCL/SLIME/emacs preconfigured, complete with webserver and gui packages.