From: Lionel Goulet
Subject: What's a good book to start learning lisp?
Date: 
Message-ID: <53pit2$dnn@news-central.tiac.net>
Would anyone care to advise me on a book to learn lisp, starting from the very 
beginning?  My research requires me to at least be able to read Common Lisp, in 
order to understand the examples.

I've read a few FAQ's and they recommend either
David Touretzki's "Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation"
or
Deborah Tatar's "A Programmer's Guide to Common Lisp."

As these tomes are quite expensive, I wondering if anyone would care to comment 
on either of them.

Are there any Web-based resources to learning Common Lisp (other than "Common 
Lisp, the Language" which may be fine if you already know the difference 
between a "multiple-value-bind" and a "multiple-value-setq" which I don't!)?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.  Please reply via e-mail.  Thank you.
-- 
LLiioonneell
Lionel Goulet  ······@tiac.net  at the Bookmark Internet Reference Desk.
                                Why are you wasting your time searching?
                                http://www.tiac.net/users/goulet/
Have you ever imagined a world where there were no hypothetical questions?

From: Nathan Sidwell
Subject: Re: What's a good book to start learning lisp?
Date: 
Message-ID: <32621F77.2EAE@pact.srf.ac.uk>
Lionel Goulet wrote:
> 
> Would anyone care to advise me on a book to learn lisp, starting from the very
> beginning?  My research requires me to at least be able to read Common Lisp, in
> order to understand the examples.
> 
> I've read a few FAQ's and they recommend either
> David Touretzki's "Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation"
> or
> Deborah Tatar's "A Programmer's Guide to Common Lisp."
> 
> As these tomes are quite expensive, I wondering if anyone would care to comment
> on either of them.
I've just got back to lisp in the last few months. As reference I used Tatar's book
and CLtL2 (because they were in the library). I found Tatar's book very useful for
both refreshing my memory and explaining how to do things in lisp. It is very definitatly
targeted at those who are programmers.

I did find the information (intentionally) incomplete and now mainly refer to CLtL2.

I don't know about Touretzki, 'cos it wasn't in the library.

For your reference, I have previously implemented a lisp on 8bit micros
before CLtL1 existed, so had quite a bit of knowledge about lisp to begin with.

nathan

-- 
Nathan Sidwell                    The windy road is more interesting
Chameleon Architecture Group at SGS-Thomson, formerly Inmos
http://www.pact.srf.ac.uk/~nathan/                  Tel 0117 9707182
······@pact.srf.ac.uk or ······@inmos.co.uk or ······@bristol.st.com
From: Mark McConnell
Subject: Re: What's a good book to start learning lisp?
Date: 
Message-ID: <3264665B.39FB@math.okstate.edu>
> Lionel Goulet wrote:
> >
> > Would anyone care to advise me on a book to learn lisp, starting from the very
> > beginning?  My research requires me to at least be able to read Common Lisp, in
> > order to understand the examples.

I liked Winston and Horn, _Lisp_, 3rd edition (2nd okay too),
Addison-Wesley.
From: Paul Meurer
Subject: Re: What's a good book to start learning lisp?
Date: 
Message-ID: <paul.meurer-1610961818100001@129.177.151.107>
In article <·············@math.okstate.edu>, Mark McConnell
<·······@math.okstate.edu> wrote:

> > Lionel Goulet wrote:
> > >
> > > Would anyone care to advise me on a book to learn lisp, starting
from the very
> > > beginning? 

In my opinion, this one is excellent, and gets you to the essentials of
(Lisp) programming:

Paul Graham: ANSI Common Lisp
Prentice Hall Series in Artificial Intelligence, 1996
ISBN 0-13-370875-6
Price: 19.95 pounds

Paul

-------------------------------
Paul Meurer
The Norwegian Term Bank
Str�mgt. 53
5007 Bergen, Norway
http://www.uib.no/nt/index.html
-------------------------------
From: ········@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu
Subject: Re: What's a good book to start learning lisp?
Date: 
Message-ID: <1996Oct17.044302.10046@ohstpy>
In article <·············@math.okstate.edu>, Mark McConnell <·······@math.okstate.edu> writes:
>> Lionel Goulet wrote:
>> >
>> > Would anyone care to advise me on a book to learn lisp, starting from the very
>> > beginning?  My research requires me to at least be able to read Common Lisp, in
>> > order to understand the examples.
> 
> I liked Winston and Horn, _Lisp_, 3rd edition (2nd okay too),
> Addison-Wesley.

I second that.

-G
From: Bradford W. Miller
Subject: Re: What's a good book to start learning lisp?
Date: 
Message-ID: <miller-ya023060031410962103050001@milano.mcc.com>
In article <··········@news-central.tiac.net>, ······@tiac.net (Lionel
Goulet) wrote:

> Would anyone care to advise me on a book to learn lisp, starting from the
very 
> beginning?  My research requires me to at least be able to read Common
Lisp, in 
> order to understand the examples.
> 
> I've read a few FAQ's and they recommend either
> David Touretzki's "Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation"
> or
> Deborah Tatar's "A Programmer's Guide to Common Lisp."
> 

They're both very good books; decide how strong your programming background
is. If strong, go for the latter, I've used the former to teach Lisp to
Humanities
students.

A good first book is "The Little Lisper", and you can find citations on this
and other books on the ALU site:

http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/miller/ALU/

Good luck,
From: Bill Hunter
Subject: Re: What's a good book to start learning lisp?
Date: 
Message-ID: <32689919.270006789@snews2.zippo.com>
On 13 Oct 1996 02:07:30 GMT, ······@tiac.net (Lionel Goulet) wrote:

>Would anyone care to advise me on a book to learn lisp, starting from the very 
>beginning?  My research requires me to at least be able to read Common Lisp, in 
>order to understand the examples.
>
You might try "Common Lisp - An interactive Approach" by Stuart
Shapiro.  Computer Science Press (W.H. Freeman and Co) $29.95
(if and only if you have a working lisp interpreter to play with.  The
"interactive" in the title is accurate.)  It does a nice job of
building your knowledge gradually, i.e. with no step functions.
From: William A. Barnett-Lewis
Subject: Re: What's a good book to start learning lisp?
Date: 
Message-ID: <546hgr$od5@grandcanyon.binc.net>
In article <··········@news-central.tiac.net>, ······@tiac.net says...
(SNIP)

"ANSI Common Lisp"
Paul Graham
Prentice-Hall 1996
isbn 0-13-370875-6

This is the best basic text available.

William Barnett-Lewis