From: ········@coils.cims.nyu.edu (Mark McConnell)
Date: 19 Jan 1995 15:34:12 -0500
Actually, I would suggest that you read a standard textbook on Lisp,
from a theoretical computer science perspective. (I liked Winston and
Horn, _Lisp_.) After that, and some programming experiments, you
could switch and focus on numerical computing, by reading about
Sussman's work or by looking at the documentation in good compilers.
I would not call the Winston and Horn book a text on Lisp from a
theoretical computer science perspective. For that, one would should
turn to the literature in the Scheme community, or to that in the
functional programming language community, especially in the area of
semantics of programming languages.
Also the last edition of Winston and Horn I saw did not conform
to modern style. Supposedly this has been remedied in the latest
edition. Do the revisions now do justice to modern Common Lisp?
I think that Norvig's book is one of the few that do justice to
modern Common Lisp programming. It would seem that most of the
sharpest Lispers are not prolific authors, not suprisingly.
From: Peter Schlemowitz
Subject: Re: good Lisp textbooks [was: Re: Physics with lisp ?]
Date:
Message-ID: <3fsu0l$843@panix3.panix.com>
A really great book is, "On Lisp - Advanced Techniques For Common Lisp"
by Paul Graham published by Prentice Hall.
This book is not for beginners is a very enjoyable read. It's to bad there
is no source disk.
I found my copy at McGraw Hill Book Store NYC.
From: Marty Hall
Subject: Re: good Lisp textbooks [was: Re: Physics with lisp ?]
Date:
Message-ID: <D2v29A.CtJ@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu>
In article <··········@panix3.panix.com> ······@panix.com (Peter Schlemowitz) writes:
>A really great book is, "On Lisp - Advanced Techniques For Common Lisp"
>by Paul Graham published by Prentice Hall.
>
>This book is not for beginners is a very enjoyable read.
I agree that this is an outstanding text. However, in this context (a
book for *first* learning Common Lisp), I would state the "is not for
beginners" part a bit more strongly. A few brilliant hackers might
understand closures, macros, and destructive operations right off the
bat, and will appreciate the power this provides. But in my experience
teaching Lisp, most won't, so introducing all these advanced features
to the beginner will only serve to make them think that Lisp is harder
than other languages. So unless the person has a background in
another Lisp dialect or functional programming (ML, Haskell, etc.), I
would strongly recommend against Graham as the very first text.
Touretzky (Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation)
and Wilensky (Common Lispcraft) are two reasonable first choices,
IMHO. If the person has an AI background, then Winston and Horn (Lisp)
is also a good choice for a text that focuses on AI examples. Abelson
and Sussman (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) is a
top-notch introduction to programming that uses Scheme, if someone
wants to learn the general ideas of Lisp programming but doesn't yet
need details of Common Lisp syntax. Norvig (Paradigms of AI
Programming) is, like Graham, excellent but a bit more advanced, best
for people with some AI and Lisp background already.
Please don't thinking I am panning Graham's text. In fact, I think it
is outstanding, and has the best treatment of macros I've ever seen
(and I find macros extremely useful in real-life). I just think it is
much too hard for someone who has never seen Lisp, unless they are the
type of person who likes diving into the hairy stuff right away.
> It's to bad there is no source disk.
Note that the sources are available by anonymous FTP from
endor.harvard.edu in /pub/onlisp/.
- Marty
(proclaim '(inline skates))
From: Jeff Dalton
Subject: Re: good Lisp textbooks [was: Re: Physics with lisp ?]
Date:
Message-ID: <D2x6Ly.9n6@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
In article <··········@panix3.panix.com> ······@panix.com (Peter Schlemowitz) writes:
>A really great book is, "On Lisp - Advanced Techniques For Common Lisp"
>by Paul Graham published by Prentice Hall.
>
>This book is not for beginners is a very enjoyable read. It's to bad there
>is no source disk.
But you can get the source on the net, or at least you could. I
believe the book says where. If that fails, I'm pretty sure I have
them somewhere...
-- jd
In article <·················@martigny.ai.mit.edu> ···@zurich.ai.mit.edu (William G. Dubuque) writes:
> From: ········@coils.cims.nyu.edu (Mark McConnell)
> Date: 19 Jan 1995 15:34:12 -0500
>
> Actually, I would suggest that you read a standard textbook on Lisp,
> from a theoretical computer science perspective. (I liked Winston and
> Horn, _Lisp_.) After that, and some programming experiments, you
> could switch and focus on numerical computing, by reading about
> Sussman's work or by looking at the documentation in good compilers.
>
> I would not call the Winston and Horn book a text on Lisp from a
> theoretical computer science perspective. For that, one would should
> turn to the literature in the Scheme community, or to that in the
> functional programming language community, especially in the area of
> semantics of programming languages.
>
> Also the last edition of Winston and Horn I saw did not conform
> to modern style. Supposedly this has been remedied in the latest
> edition. Do the revisions now do justice to modern Common Lisp?
>
> I think that Norvig's book is one of the few that do justice to
> modern Common Lisp programming. It would seem that most of the
> sharpest Lispers are not prolific authors, not suprisingly.
Norvig's book is good. I also like Paul Graham's book:
@book{Graham94,
author = {Paul Graham},
title = {On Lisp: Advanced Techniques for Common Lisp},
year = 1994,
publisher = {Prentice-Hall},
misc = {ISBN 0-13-030552-9}
}
As advertised, it's a book on advanced techniques, but some of the early
chapters talk about proper functional style, operations on lists, and such.
Scott D. Anderson
········@cs.umass.edu
From: Richard Billington
Subject: Re: good Lisp textbooks [was: Re: Physics with lisp ?]
Date:
Message-ID: <3gbcpi$431@solaria.cc.gatech.edu>
The rumor is that Paul Graham is working on a
``pre-quel'', if you will, to On Lisp.
I recommend On Lisp to non-lispers who are really experienced
programmers too. It gets immediately to what seperates lisp from the
rest, rather than dilly-dallying around with explanations
of lists and list operators or some other such boring stuff.