I've been using Racket to work through The Little Learner[1] and it's been a good experience. You need minimal Racket to work through the book (lambda, let, define, map; I think that's about it). But I branched out to learn more about the language and the standard library, and it's a fun and surprisingly powerful system to explore.

The biggest downside of Racket is that you can't build up your environment incrementally the way you can with Common Lisp/Sly. When you change anything in your source you reload REPL state from scratch. After CL it feels incredibly limiting in a Lisp. Incremental buildup is so valuable, if I wanted to do any Lisp work again I'd reach for CL before Racket just for this reason.

BTW, the book is _great_. Quick, easy to get through, very easy to understand, and teaches you everything from soup to nuts. If you're familiar with lisps you can get through the book in two weeks. It's then easy to get into any deep learning tutorial or project you want, or even start implementing some papers. The book manages not to water down the material despite not using any math at all. Although if you know some linear algebra or multivariable calculus you'll appreciate the beauty of the field more.

[1] https://www.thelittlelearner.com/

I learned recently that Racket is an accepted language on LeetCode, which solved the problem “when am I ever going to write lisp in real life…” for me. It’s provided a great excuse.

I have really been enjoying writing it! Paredit and SLIME are addictive.

    (≠ "LeetCode" "real life")