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Common Lisp

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A programmable programming language.
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Track mentors

5 Mentors

Our mentors are friendly, experienced Common Lisp developers who will help teach you new techniques and tricks.
Track students

1,278 Students

Join hundreds of students who have enjoyed learning and improving their skills by taking this track.
Track exercises

42 Exercises

Hundreds of hours have gone into making these exercises fun, useful, and challenging to help you enjoy learning.

About Common Lisp

(defun distance (str1 str2
                 &key (test #'char=))
  "Number of positional differences in
   two equal length strings."
  (when (= (length str1) (length str2))
    (count nil
           (map 'list test str1 str2))))

Common Lisp is an offshoot of the long-running family of Lisp programming languages. It's a multi-paradigm programming language that allows you to choose the approach and paradigm according to your application domain.

Common Lisp has fast prototyping capabilities, and exceptional support for object oriented programming. It also boasts a macro system which allows you to adapt the language to your needs, and a run-time environment which allows modification of running applications.

To learn more about Common Lisp, take a look at the Common Lisp homepage.

Join the Common Lisp track

Exercism is a great website

What I like about it is that I am able to solve the challenges in a TDD way working in a environment that I am familiar (my own PC not a browser IDE) and the cherry on the top of the cake is that I have access to code reviews.

Bud Chirica, Scotland
Relaxed. Encouraging. Supportive.

Meet the Common Lisp Track mentors

Once you join the Common Lisp language track, you will receive support and feedback from our team of mentors. Here are the bios of a few of the mentors of this track.

Avatar of Tim Hawes

Tim Hawes https://github.com/timotheosh

I love Lisp, functional programming, and the nostalgia behind Common Lisp.
Avatar of Pierre Thierry

Pierre Thierry https://github.com/kephas

I fell in love with Common Lisp for its interactivity, metaprogramming and uniform syntax. If I have any say, it's usually my language of choice for both professional and personal projects.
Avatar of Tushar Tyagi

Tushar Tyagi https://github.com/tushartyagi

I dabble with Common Lisp and find it interesting because of minimal syntax and the amazing functionalities which the syntax brings.
Avatar of Mark Simpson

Mark Simpson https://github.com/verdammelt

I have always been interested in Lisps since taking the SICP course in college. I love the expressiveness and conciseness of the simple syntax, and the ability to build the language upward to meet the domain.
Avatar of Brooks J Rady

Brooks J Rady thelostlambda.xyz

Lover of functional programming, writing code that writes code for me, and (evidently) parentheses.
Fun. Challenging. Interesting

Community-sourced Common Lisp exercises

These are a few of the 42 exercises on the Common Lisp track. You can see all the exercises here.

Perfect Numbers
easy
number theory
math
Beer Song
easy
control flow conditionals
control flow loops
integers
text formatting
Twelve Days
medium
algorithms
strings
Hello World
easy
strings
Triangle
easy
control flow conditionals
filtering
floating point numbers
integers
Difference Of Squares
easy
control flow loops
floating point numbers
integers
math
Passionate. Knowledgeable. Creative.

Meet the Common Lisp Track maintainers

The Common Lisp Maintainers are the brains behind the Common Lisp Track. They spend their spare time creating interesting and challenging exercises that we can all learn from. We are incredibly grateful for their hard work. Here are the bios of a few of the maintainers of this track.

Avatar of Mark Simpson

Mark Simpson Code and Cocktails

I have always been interested in Lisps since taking the SICP course in college. I love the expressiveness and conciseness of the simple syntax, and the ability to build the language upward to meet the domain.

Get started with the Common Lisp track. As with everything on Exercism, it's 100% free!

Join the Common Lisp Track