I'm still plugging away at 'Practical,' picking and choosing, going
back and re-reading, etc. My little pet project is looking much like C
in Lisp, but with a few 'with' macros.
Would I be better off with 'ANSI Common Lisp' or one of the other books
to progress?
I've been going back and forth between Practical Common Lisp and ANSI
Common Lisp (with Common Lisp the Language, 2nd ed as a reference). I
find that PCL and ACL complement eachother fairly well.
PCL has a lot of helpful utility codes that are well organized by
chapter. It has project ideas that I'm likely to take and modify and
make my own (therefore getting a lot of help on the project by reading
the right chapter). It is also very approachable for this newbie.
ACL, on the other hand, is what is stretching my mind, and it sounds
like that is what you are missing. Paul Graham uses hard examples
(always short though, no more than a page or two). Every time I look at
one of graham's functions, even if it's just a few lines long (which
they almost always are) it makes me think pretty hard. Reading ACL gets
tiring though (not boring, but actually makes me tired) so I end up
going back to PCL fairly quickly. ACL is very intense. Sometimes I like
that, but sometimes it's too much for me.
I would recommend either going back and forth between them, as I have,
or reading PCL first. Even after going all the way through PCL, I have
a feeling that anything from chapter 4 onward in ACL will stretch your
mind at least a little bit.
Note that Paul Graham actually considers ACL to be a beginner's book.
I'm going to try hard to finish it this week and move onto his advanced
book, On Lisp.
I've heard people speak highly of Norvig's Paradigms of Artificial
Intelligence also. I haven't yet gotten a copy of that.
By the way, I set up a signature with my webpage, but I don't see it at
the end of my posts. Can anyone else see it? I'm wondering if google
groups hides it from me or if I messed up the setup.
On 29 Apr 2005 13:44:01 -0700, <············@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've been going back and forth between Practical Common Lisp and ANSI
> Common Lisp (with Common Lisp the Language, 2nd ed as a reference). I
> find that PCL and ACL complement eachother fairly well.
I decided that picking up Winston & Horn (3rd ed) from Ebay would help
referee the above.
> By the way, I set up a signature with my webpage, but I don't see it at
> the end of my posts. Can anyone else see it? I'm wondering if google
> groups hides it from me or if I messed up the setup.
I have never seen it actually work, just your occaisonal manual
additions. You might want to consider using Free Agent, or perhaps
there is a usenet reader on Lisp-In-A-Box.
--
Everyman has three hearts;
one to show the world, one to show friends, and one only he knows.
>I decided that picking up Winston & Horn (3rd ed) from Ebay would help
>referee the above.
Not sure what you mean, but I didn't like Winston & Horn. It reminded
me of high school textbooks, dry and tending to focus on the most
trivial details. By contrast, Seibel and Graham's books are fairly
fast-paced and amusing.
If you find yourself writing lisp code in c style, SICP can be of great
help. The book teach you how to program, without using setq (set! in
scheme) in the first half of the book.
I'm struggling at first because functional style programming takes some
time to get used to.
Don't expect to go through SICP by reading it once only. Each time you
go back you'll discover something new.
If you think ACL is stretching your mind, SICP will definitely make you
work *real* hard.
The book, like PCL, is available online free.
HTH
nsr wrote:
> If you find yourself writing lisp code in c style, SICP can be of
> great help. The book teach you how to program, without using setq
> (set! in scheme) in the first half of the book.
>
> I'm struggling at first because functional style programming takes
> some time to get used to.
>
> Don't expect to go through SICP by reading it once only. Each time
> you go back you'll discover something new.
>
> If you think ACL is stretching your mind, SICP will definitely
> make you work *real* hard.
>
> The book, like PCL, is available online free.
Video lectures:
http://lisp.tech.coop/AudioVideo#sicp
If getting away from C-style programming is your goal, this is
definitely one source. That's one thing Scheme's good for, even if it's
not a tool I find myself wanting to use.
"Eric Lavigne" <············@gmail.com> writes:
> I've heard people speak highly of Norvig's Paradigms of Artificial
> Intelligence also. I haven't yet gotten a copy of that.
Recommended. It also has a "practical" flavor.
> By the way, I set up a signature with my webpage, but I don't see it at
> the end of my posts. Can anyone else see it? I'm wondering if google
I can't.
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (see also http://clrfi.alu.org):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
On Fri, 29 Apr 2005 13:06:49 -0700, jonathon wrote:
>
> I'm still plugging away at 'Practical,' picking and choosing, going
> back and re-reading, etc. My little pet project is looking much like C
> in Lisp, but with a few 'with' macros.
>
> Would I be better off with 'ANSI Common Lisp' or one of the other books
> to progress?
I've read "ANSI Common Lisp" and I'm currently reading "On Lisp" - then
I'm going to read these:
http://6url.com/H2K
(buy them for me - plz. ok?)
I'm (still) waiting for PCL.
--
mvh,
Lars Rune Nøstdal
http://lars.nostdal.org/
On Sat, 30 Apr 2005 13:14:06 +0200, Lars Rune Nøstdal wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Apr 2005 13:06:49 -0700, jonathon wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm still plugging away at 'Practical,' picking and choosing, going
>> back and re-reading, etc. My little pet project is looking much like C
>> in Lisp, but with a few 'with' macros.
>>
>> Would I be better off with 'ANSI Common Lisp' or one of the other books
>> to progress?
oh - and i think the best way to avoid C-style is to just code and code
and code .. it'll fade away when you forget the old patterns and start to
think the way you used to think
(i find lisp match my "original" way of mind much more than C)
--
mvh,
Lars Rune Nøstdal
http://lars.nostdal.org/