I was reading "A Little Smalltalk" by Timothy Bud this weekend. It's a
book that I've probably had for year, but just picked it up again and
re-read it.
For those who may not have seen this book, it discusses the use and
implementation of a Little Smalltalk, which I believe is the GNU
Smalltalk, but I really don't know.
It starts with some basica sytax and use chapters, flows into some
other topics dealing with Genreators and Filters and dealing with
simulations and multi-tasking. The first half is really nice I think.
The second half deals with the actual implementation of the
interpreter with snippets of C source and discussions about all the
concessions and decisions that were made in the design.
I really liked this book and was wondering if there might be a
similiar book for Lisp/Scheme. I guess SICP has some discussion in it,
but I've never actually looked at it. I was hoping that there would be
some notes in the XLISP distribution, but there's barely a README in
the file I picked up. Maybe there's an original article describing
XLISP, but I haven't been able to hunt it down.
I'm looking for something real casual, not a real formal treatment.
There was a book years ago on Threaded Interpreters that discussed the
implementation of a Forth-like language, and that was a great book, I
thought. Something practical and usable, yet still approachable at
a level just above bathroom reading. Light, Sunday 'at the beach'
reading. Give folks the impression that I may actually have a
life...Sunblock, Ice coolers, gaudy umbrellas and scantily clad
humanity don't really mix well with SICP...The book weighs more than a
six-pack.
So, if anyone has some pointers to a book or some papers online that
give a similiar treatment to Lisp/Scheme, I'd appreciate it.
--
Will Hartung - Rancho Santa Margarita. It's a dry heat. ······@netcom.com
1990 VFR750 - VFR=Very Red "Ho, HaHa, Dodge, Parry, Spin, HA! THRUST!"
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······@netcom.com (Will Hartung) writes:
>I was reading "A Little Smalltalk" by Timothy Bud this weekend. It's a
>book that I've probably had for year, but just picked it up again and
>re-read it.
The closest thing I can think of is "The Little Schemer" (formerly
published as "The Little Lisper"). It's a wonderfull book that
emphasises the use of recursion and recognizing patterns in solutions
to problems and applying the pattern to progressively bigger problems.
The author's deliberately don't include formal definitions, arguing
that you're more likely to remember your own intuitive definition than
a formal one. There is a follow up book called "The Seasoned Schemer".
"I learned more about LISP from this book than I have from any of
the other LISP books I've read over the years.... While other books
will tell you the mechanics of LISP, they can leave you largely
uninformed on the style of problem-solving for which LISP is
optimized. The Little LISPer teaches you how to think in the LISP
language... an inexpensive, enjoyable introduction."
-- Gregg Williams, Byte
The Little Schemer, 4th edition
January 1996
ISBN 0-262-56099-2
216 pp. -- 12 illus.
$16.50 (paper)
<I>The Seasoned Schemer
January 1996
ISBN 0-262-56100-X
224 pp. -- 11 illus.
$18.50 (paper)
By Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen
See <http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/mitp/recent-books/comp/friip.html> for
more info.
--
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A Sun Microsystems Business the presence of bugs but never to show
············@eng.sun.com their absence. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
[Will Hartung]
| I'm looking for something real casual, not a real formal treatment.
| There was a book years ago on Threaded Interpreters that discussed the
| implementation of a Forth-like language, and that was a great book, I
| thought. Something practical and usable, yet still approachable at
| a level just above bathroom reading.
I think you'd do well to look for Tony Hasemer's "A Beginner's Guide
to LISP". My copy is from 1984, published by Addison-Wesley, and is
ISBN 0-201-14634-7. I used XLISP back when I read it, and had no
problems that I can remember getting code from the book to work. It's
written to be usable with any Lisp; the introduction says that "all of
the programs in this book can be run using a 10K Lisp on a 32K
machine".
Oh, and if you (or anyone else) has a more specific reference on that
old threaded interpreter book, I'd love to hear about it. If it's the
one with the Z80 example code, then I'm pretty sure it's the same one
I borrowed from someone some 10 years ago or so, and really enjoyed --
I'd kind of like to get hold of it again.
-tih
--
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo
···@Hamartun.Priv.NO
Tom I Helbekkmo wrote:
> Oh, and if you (or anyone else) has a more specific reference on that
> old threaded interpreter book, I'd love to hear about it. If it's the
> one with the Z80 example code, then I'm pretty sure it's the same one
> I borrowed from someone some 10 years ago or so, and really enjoyed --
> I'd kind of like to get hold of it again.
Threaded Interpretive Languages
by R. G. Loeliger
1981
McGraw Hill / Byte Books
0-07-038360-X
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Algorithms Corporation - 615-791-1636 - USA