Not to try and skip to the last page of a good book, but I was
wondering what you had in mind for the last chapter here, Peter? Was
this to be a little rant of your own, some conclusions about how good
Lisp is, or perhaps a list of what resources would be good for the
continuing learner?
Note: perhaps this would have been better via email, but I figured with
all the talk about this book here, others might be interested in this,
too...
Jeff M.
"Jeff M." <·······@gmail.com> writes:
> Not to try and skip to the last page of a good book, but I was
> wondering what you had in mind for the last chapter here, Peter? Was
Peter was kind enough to let me have a peek at the last chapter of
"Practical Common Lisp", which only contains:
You HAVE been assimilated. Resistance is futile.
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://alu.cliki.net/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
"Jeff M." <·······@gmail.com> writes:
> Not to try and skip to the last page of a good book, but I was
> wondering what you had in mind for the last chapter here, Peter? Was
> this to be a little rant of your own, some conclusions about how good
> Lisp is, or perhaps a list of what resources would be good for the
> continuing learner?
Probably some of all of those. I'm going to try to at least point
people in the right direction for areas I haven't covered at all--GUI
programming being the big one. And I'll try to discuss a bit why now
is a particularly good time to be learning Lisp--the ever growing set
of libraries at common-lisp.net, etc.
> Note: perhaps this would have been better via email, but I figured
> with all the talk about this book here, others might be interested
> in this, too...
Actually, I'd be interested to hear if there's stuff that folks feel I
should at least mention, that a new Lisp programmer needs to know
about. Obviously I'm not going to explain anything in any great detail
in the conclusion but I can at least mention, "you should be aware of
...". Or maybe I'll just stick with the draft I sent to Paolo.
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@javamonkey.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
Peter Seibel wrote:
> Actually, I'd be interested to hear if there's stuff that folks feel
> I should at least mention, that a new Lisp programmer needs to know
> about. Obviously I'm not going to explain anything in any great
> detail in the conclusion but I can at least mention, "you should be
> aware of...". Or maybe I'll just stick with the draft I sent to
> Paolo.
Well, the following suggestion would probably better fit in a preface,
but, anyway, how about taking respect to you .sig
> Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
and including the following quote from Matrix, the movie:
``If you take the blue pill, you will wake up tomorrow and remember
nothing. If, however, you take the red pill, I will show you the
Matrix...'' (from memory)
You may want to adapt that a bit. :-)
[And, it had an additional tremendously cool effect if the wrapper of
your book was cerise.]
--tcr.
Tobias Rittweiler wrote:
> Well, the following suggestion would probably better fit in a preface,
> but, anyway, how about taking respect to you .sig
>
> > Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
>
> and including the following quote from Matrix, the movie:
>
> ``If you take the blue pill, you will wake up tomorrow and remember
> nothing. If, however, you take the red pill, I will show you the
> Matrix...'' (from memory)
No, that's from the APL users' manual. :-)
> You may want to adapt that a bit. :-)
Actually, the final speech from "The Matrix" would go
pretty nicely as the end of a book about Lisp, without
too much modification.
--
Gareth McCaughan
.sig under construc
"Tobias C. Rittweiler" schrieb:
> ``If you take the blue pill, you will wake up tomorrow and remember
> nothing. If, however, you take the red pill, I will show you the
> Matrix...'' (from memory)
If Neo is the one, Neo was born with the green pill. When Neo looks (in
the following scene) at Morfeus, he may see the green Matrix Glyphs. So,
Neo did not need any pill, right?
What about a not Matrix, but lispy way to end the book? Or simply add
some routines ending with "...left as an example to the user"?
stefan
Trent Buck <·········@tznvy.pbz> writes:
> Up spake lin8080:
> > the following scene) at Morfeus, he may see the green Matrix Glyphs. So,
>
> s/Morfeus/Mopheus/, the greek god of dreams.
Morpheus. The "ph" is a single letter in Greek, which
(were it not for the long tradition, derived from Latin,
of using "ph" to represent it) would be rather well
transliterated into English as an "f". :-)
--
Gareth McCaughan
.sig under construc
Up spake Gareth McCaughan:
> > > the following scene) at Morfeus, he may see the green Matrix Glyphs. So,
> > s/Morfeus/Mopheus/, the greek god of dreams.
> Morpheus.
Ag. I am as clumsy as the OP.
Peter Seibel wrote:
> Actually, I'd be interested to hear if there's stuff that folks feel
> I should at least mention, that a new Lisp programmer needs to know
> about. Obviously I'm not going to explain anything in any great
> detail in the conclusion but I can at least mention, "you should be
> aware of...". Or maybe I'll just stick with the draft I sent to
> Paolo.
Well, the following suggestion would probably better fit in a preface,
but, anyway, how about taking respect to you .sig
> Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
and including the following quote from Matrix, the movie:
``If you take the blue pill, you will wake up tomorrow and remember
nothing. If, however, you take the red pill, I will show you the
Matrix...'' (from memory)
You may want to adapt that a bit. :-)
[And, it had an additional tremendously cool effect if the wrapper of
your book was cerise.]
--tcr.
Something that PG discusses in one of his essays especially well is how
what most new programmers today consider "modern" in a language (gc,
macros, functional programming) all have deep roots in this wonderful
language called Lisp, which has been around for some time.
http://store.yahoo.com/paulgraham/diff.html
Whether paraphrasing, asking PG for permission to quote portions of
this essay, or even coming up with a better method of wording this,
IMHO, would be very productive.
Something I think many people miss (in the discussion of Lisp's age) is
that, because of its age, it is extremely robust. Lisp's garbage
collectors are among the best, many problems that other language are
beginning to face with macros are already solved in Lisp, and more...
This is a "conclusion" that I really have yet to see in a Lisp book
that, especially in your case (as many Lisp newcomers will be reading
it), should be up front and center.
Jeff M.
I should also add the notion of .NET's "reflection": being able to
generate and execute code at runtime. This, especially, is a very hot
selling point for the .NET runtime. And is hardly a new idea. It is sad
that so many new programmers think it is.
Jeff M.
On 6 Jan 2005 07:25:15 -0800, Jeff M. <·······@gmail.com> wrote:
> Not to try and skip to the last page of a good book, but I was
> wondering what you had in mind for the last chapter here, Peter? Was
> this to be a little rant of your own, some conclusions about how good
> Lisp is, or perhaps a list of what resources would be good for the
> continuing learner?
>
> Note: perhaps this would have been better via email, but I figured with
> all the talk about this book here, others might be interested in this,
> too...
>
> Jeff M.
>
Well one thing you have completely left out is optimizing lisp.
The only good source I know is PAIP.
Perhaps a reference to this?
--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
"John Thingstad" <··············@chello.no> writes:
> On 6 Jan 2005 07:25:15 -0800, Jeff M. <·······@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Not to try and skip to the last page of a good book, but I was
>> wondering what you had in mind for the last chapter here, Peter? Was
>> this to be a little rant of your own, some conclusions about how good
>> Lisp is, or perhaps a list of what resources would be good for the
>> continuing learner?
>>
>> Note: perhaps this would have been better via email, but I figured with
>> all the talk about this book here, others might be interested in this,
>> too...
>>
>> Jeff M.
>>
>
> Well one thing you have completely left out is optimizing lisp. The
> only good source I know is PAIP. Perhaps a reference to this?
Yup. I definitely plan to mention the basics in the conclusion--to
make Lisp code go fast you need to profile, fix your algorithms, and
then look at a few well-placed declarations. Then post it to
comp.lang.lisp where the hardcore speed freaks will tune it within an
inch of its life. ;-)
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@javamonkey.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
On 6 Jan 2005 07:25:15 -0800, Jeff M. <·······@gmail.com> wrote:
> Not to try and skip to the last page of a good book, but I was
> wondering what you had in mind for the last chapter here, Peter? Was
> this to be a little rant of your own, some conclusions about how good
> Lisp is, or perhaps a list of what resources would be good for the
> continuing learner?
>
> Note: perhaps this would have been better via email, but I figured with
> all the talk about this book here, others might be interested in this,
> too...
>
> Jeff M.
>
In chapter 19 Beyond exception handeling
(defun log-analyzer ()
(handler-bind ((malformed-log-entry-error
#'(lambda (c)
(use-value (make-instance 'malformed-log-entry :text
(text c))))))
(dolist (log (find-all-logs))
(analyze-log log))))
Note the make-instance should be make-condition
In chapter 21 Packages and symbols
One thing I miss from the package chapter is :nick.
You mention common-lisp-user then use (in-package cl-user)
but you never explain why this works.
I also miss something on ASDF and/or defsystem.
--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
"John Thingstad" <··············@chello.no> writes:
> On 6 Jan 2005 07:25:15 -0800, Jeff M. <·······@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Not to try and skip to the last page of a good book, but I was
>> wondering what you had in mind for the last chapter here, Peter?
>> Was this to be a little rant of your own, some conclusions about
>> how good Lisp is, or perhaps a list of what resources would be good
>> for the continuing learner?
>>
>> Note: perhaps this would have been better via email, but I figured
>> with all the talk about this book here, others might be interested
>> in this, too...
>>
>> Jeff M.
>>
>
> In chapter 19 Beyond exception handeling
> (defun log-analyzer ()
> (handler-bind ((malformed-log-entry-error
> #'(lambda (c)
> (use-value (make-instance 'malformed-log-entry
> :text (text c))))))
> (dolist (log (find-all-logs))
> (analyze-log log))))
>
> Note the make-instance should be make-condition
I don't think so--that's making an object to pass to the USE-VALUE
restart, not a condition.
> In chapter 21 Packages and symbols
> One thing I miss from the package chapter is :nick.
> You mention common-lisp-user then use (in-package cl-user)
> but you never explain why this works.
I think there's a bit more explanation now but I it's true I don't go
into great detail. That was a conscious choice.
> I also miss something on ASDF and/or defsystem.
I'll mention that in the conclusion and all the example code available
from the web site will be built with ASDF.
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@javamonkey.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp