I am a high school math teacher and I'm trying to start a course this
year on computer programming using Lisp, but all of the computer stores
I've called haven't had it. Does anyone out there know where I can
find it? (The computers we're using are IBM's). If there is a copy
on the internet (at a university or whatever) that I could download
for free, that would be great. But we have a budget, so I could pay
for it if not.
Also, I want to use a book called "The Little Lisper" (don't know
the author), but I've had trouble finding that, too. Anyone
know where I could get this, or if not, a good substitute for this
book? How about good C++ books for high schoolers just starting
programming? (We'll be doing that later on in the year. Perhaps
sooner if I don't have any more luck with Lisp.) I've seen a book
called "Programming Pearls" that looked pretty good, but I'd love
to get some feedback.
Thanks,
Todd
······@nr.infi.net wrote:
>... Also, I want to use a book called "The Little Lisper" (don't know
>the author), but I've had trouble finding that, too. Anyone
>know where I could get this, or if not, a good substitute for this
>book?
>
"The Little LISPer" is now called "The Little Schemer". It is now in
4th edition, authors Daniel P Friedman and Matthias Felleisen. MIT Press.
There is also a more advanced book by the same authors and publishers
called "The Seasoned Schemer". FYI Scheme is a simplified dialect of
Lisp.
See http://www-mitpress.mit.edu:80/mitp/recent-books/comp/friip.html for
more info and downloadable s/w.
--
Alex McLachlan
Logica UK Ltd
email: ··········@logica.com
Views expressed are my own and not Logica's.
An excellent text for learning Common LISP on one's own is:
Stuart C. Shapiro,
_Common Lisp: An Interactive Approach_,
Principles of Computer Science Series,
New York: Computer Science Press/W. H. Freeman, 1992,
xxi + 358 pp.,
ISBN 0-7167-8218-9
As the title indicates, this is an interactive text excellent for
self-study.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
William J. Rapaport
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Adjunct Professor of Philosophy
Acting Director, Center for Cognitive Science
226 Bell Hall | phone: (716) 645-3180 x 112
Department of Computer Science | fax: (716) 645-3464
SUNY Buffalo | email: ········@cs.buffalo.edu
Buffalo, NY 14260 | web: http://www.cs.buffalo.edu
······@nr.infi.net wrote:
>
> I am a high school math teacher and I'm trying to start a course this
> year on computer programming using Lisp, but all of the computer stores
> I've called haven't had it. Does anyone out there know where I can
> find it? (The computers we're using are IBM's).
[...]
>
> Also, I want to use a book called "The Little Lisper" (don't know
> the author), but I've had trouble finding that, too.
[...]
I'm delighted to see that someone is interested in teaching Lisp
in high school. It's such a great language, and it allows
one to illustrate deeper concepts of computer science very well.
(1) There are some free Lisps out there, and some commercial ones.
For the PC, I don't know enough to give advice on their quality.
They are described in the Lisp FAQ, which is at
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Web/Groups/AI/html/faqs/lang/lisp/top.html
(2) You will have to decide whether you want to teach Lisp or
Scheme. Common Lisp is a great big (and great, and big) language.
Scheme is a dialect of Lisp; it's small and very clean, and in
some respects its syntax is more logical than that of Lisp.
For more on Scheme, see the newsgroup comp.lang.scheme, or its
FAQ at
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Web/Groups/AI/html/faqs/lang/scheme/top.html
The book _The Little Lisper_ (which is excellent--uses
"programmed instruction") is about Scheme, and in fact has now
been renamed _The Little Schemer_.
(3) A good textbook for Lisp is Winston and Horn, _Lisp_, Addison-
Wesley, 3rd ed. (or 2nd.) Other readers of this group will have
other textbook preferences.
An excellent but demanding textbook based on Scheme is
Abelson and Sussman, _Structure and Interpretation of Computer
Programs_.
See the FAQs for more info on books.
(4) If you want to teach object-oriented programming, you can use
Lisp's extension called CLOS. This is described in Winston and Horn,
3rd ed., among other places. See also the group comp.lang.clos .
(5) See Marty Hall's pages at
http://www.apl.jhu.edu/~hall/lisp.html
for lots of info, including some excellent tutorials on the Web.
······@nr.infi.net wrote:
>
> I am a high school math teacher and I'm trying to start a course this
> year on computer programming using Lisp, but all of the computer stores
> I've called haven't had it. Does anyone out there know where I can
> find it? (The computers we're using are IBM's). If there is a copy
> on the internet (at a university or whatever) that I could download
> for free, that would be great. But we have a budget, so I could pay
> for it if not.
>
> Also, I want to use a book called "The Little Lisper" (don't know
> the author), but I've had trouble finding that, too. Anyone
> know where I could get this, or if not, a good substitute for this
> book? How about good C++ books for high schoolers just starting
> programming? (We'll be doing that later on in the year. Perhaps
> sooner if I don't have any more luck with Lisp.) I've seen a book
> called "Programming Pearls" that looked pretty good, but I'd love
> to get some feedback.
>
> Thanks,
> Todd
The Little LISPer by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen, 1987,
MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-56038-0
: called "Programming Pearls" that looked pretty good, but I'd love
you might be thinking of "Programming Perl," a product of the most
excellent O'Reilly publishers. i highly recommend this book, like every
other O'Reilly text i have seen. it is moderately paced, full of clear
examples, and funny too. :) However for beginning programmers you might
want to start with their "Learning Perl," which is fairly powerful for
such a comprehensive starter.
charity
--
* ········@cs.uidaho.edu
* http://www.uidaho.edu/~majo9541
* Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
········@cs.uidaho.edu (Charity Majors) writes:
>: called "Programming Pearls" that looked pretty good, but I'd love
>you might be thinking of "Programming Perl," a product of the most
>excellent O'Reilly publishers. i highly recommend this book, like every
>other O'Reilly text i have seen. it is moderately paced, full of clear
>examples, and funny too. :) However for beginning programmers you might
>want to start with their "Learning Perl," which is fairly powerful for
>such a comprehensive starter.
I think the original poster was thinking of a book by Jon Bentley titled
"Programming Pearls," published by Prentice Hall. "Programming Pearls"
is not an introductory programming textbook; it's a discussion of some
advanced programming topics (with accompanying code in PASCAL, I think).
The "Little LISPer" is a good introduction to LISP.
XLISP is a good shareware LISP system.
In <··········@newshound.csrv.uidaho.edu> ········@cs.uidaho.edu
(Charity Majors) writes:
>
>: called "Programming Pearls" that looked pretty good, but I'd love
>
>you might be thinking of "Programming Perl," a product of the most
>excellent O'Reilly publishers.
>
Or he might be thinking of "Programming Pearls" by Jon
Bentley. It's a book from the early 80s (1983 or 84) which
has almost certainly not gone out of print.
It's a classic of the clever-coding school (you won't
learn much about algorithms, design, or knowledge representation
from it. But you will see a lot of really clever tricks
that are quite nice in implementations).
Cheers,
Andy