thegenius2000

A hack is when a user manipulates a tool in a way, or in order to do something, which the creator of the tool never anticipated or even deliberately cautioned against. In so doing he exploits either the weaknesses of the tool or its unintended capabilities. The hacker's delight is in this, he understands something which the creator of the tool does not, or he is doing something which violates the creator's design sensibilities. His delight is not very different from that of the adulterer, not the accidental or incidental adulterer but the adulterer who possesses another man's vessel willfully in order to prove himself more capable than the owner. In a word, the thrill of hacking is the thrill of sin, the thrill of rebelling against a supposed higher law and standard, and in so doing elevating oneself above the Lawgiver. But hacking is not sinful, because the lawgiver in this case is not God, and this is precisely why hacking is so wonderful. It is one creature exploiting the failures of another (often more accomplished) creature and in so doing showing them to be just as much a creature as themselves.

I realise the Lisp/Haskell question has been asked before, so let me clarify. I'm about to enter my second year of uni (studying ECE) and I'm trying to decide what to focus my time on. I'm very interested in learning about writing compilers, but I also want to grow my skill in programming. Currently, the only languages I know are C-derivatives, and although I'm falling in love with Go, I know that it probably won't give me fundamentally new ways to think about software.

So, to the issue at hand. I've been struggling to start The Dragon Book, as I find it incredibly dense and difficult to understand (though, to confess, I haven't given it the dedication it deserves). Also, after reading some of PG's essays and threads on StackOverflow/Reddit/Hacker News, I've been convinced that Lisp is an important language to learn, esp. because of functional programming (which I don't know much about). Then I recently ran into Haskell, which seems to offer some of the same.

My question is this, because I'm in school, I have plenty of free time, but it's still a limited resource. Between the 3 things I've listed (Lisp, Haskell, Compilers), which do you consider to be most enriching? (To the experienced) if you were back in your hacker-youth, knowing only a few languages and how to use a shell, what would you do? Am I making a mistake by starting with the Dragon, and if so, what do you recommend? Should I learn Lisp then Haskell or vice-versa? And what should I prioritize, compilers or more languages?