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Yeah, that's why I included the "but not too dense" part ;) Personally, I actually did learn Common Lisp mostly from HyperSpec (plus reading code - I used StumpWM for a while and wanted to script it), but at that point it was my 4th Lisp (after PLT Scheme/Racket, Emacs Lisp and Clojure) and I was well prepared for it, I think, because of my focus in PL research (hobbyist). I certainly wouldn't say that HS is the way to go for new CL programmers without special preparation.

But, Racket reference docs are not a language definition like HS, RNRS or the Dylan book. The tutorials especially are quite friendly, but the reference is also full of examples, overviews, summaries and introductions, along with the links to the Guide - which can further help in comprehending the content (but only if needed, otherwise they stay out of the way). They're basically amazingly well done and I think more people should read them, if only to learn something about how to write docs and technical prose in general... :)




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