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If your goal is specifically to learn functional programming, I recommend you consider Lisp-1 dialects instead of Common Lisp, like Scheme or Clojure. While CL supports functional programming (it supports literally everything) functions exist in a separate namespace, and treating functions as data can be a little extra confusing.

As for Elixir: it heavily leans on the actor model. Understanding this was the biggest hurdle for me, but once I got over that learning Elixir was a breeze (though I was already comfortable with FP by the time I picked up Elixir). If you want to go the Elixir route, I recommend trying to play around with an actor model system in a language you are familiar with first. I was familiar with Scala so I learned the actor model by playing with Akka.

My #1 recommendation to you though is to go with Scheme and watch the SICP lectures. That will sneak functional programming into your brain without you even realizing it.




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