title: Which Lisp should I learn?
body: <h3>Which Lisp (dialect) should I learn, and why?</h3>
  
  <p>The fragmentation between CL and Scheme slows uptake (at least for me!).</p>
  
  <p>So, give me the "true answer", please!</p>
  
  <p>I have tried to read feature comparisons, and they seem to get bogged down in esoterica (that I don't fully understand) like whether the dialect is fully tail-recursive, and the like.  I'm hoping you all (collectively) can make the opaque differences clear.</p>
  
  <h3>Things I like</h3>
  
  <p>Good library support, good environments, and Unicode support.</p>
  
  <h3>Things I dislike</h3>
  
  <p>Flamewars. Features that are useful at the beginning, but interfere with long-term learning. </p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <h3>Updates</h3>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>I've been mostly using MzScheme, which I'm enjoying just fine, once I got readline support going.  I don't run a GUI on Unix, so it seemed to be a fine environment option for me.</p></li>
  <li><p>I'm also very happy that Clojure has an easy to install .deb package on debian, so it's much easier to play with.  This is a big win.  Despite the hostility of some rather easy-to-anger below, low barrier to entry is a win.  I like being spoonfed.</p></li>
  <li><p>After reading a lot more of <a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/" rel="noreferrer">SICP</a>, I do understand the issues around tail recursion much better.</p></li>
  </ol>