I learned Lisp when I was pretty young. My dad showed my the magical
(cdr (car (cons (cons a b) c)))
template, terpri with only newlines, read for reading numbers, if and lambda. I then programmed with those techniques alone, never using any functions for several years, and I ended up making a couple advanced theorem proving stuff that used lots of tiny closures later on. I remember trying to make a universe simulation program that would handle every single possible quantum state of the quanta with hard coded lambdas. I succeeded after a month I think.