Part II in the "make Peter feel good about the last two years of his
life", er I mean the, "help Peter make _Practical Common Lisp_ a huge
success", series. After asking you all to tell that you've pre-ordered
_Practical Common Lisp_, I'm also looking for "blurbs" that Apress can
use on the back cover of the book (and/or on some pages in the front
of the book if we get enough). I've collected a few so far[1] but in
the words of Mark Twain, master of humility:
"I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I
always feel that they have not said enough."
So if you've looked at my book on-line and dig it and want to see your
name in/on _Practical Common Lisp_, send a blurb my way. If you have a
title or other pithy expression of your qualification to judge a Lisp
book (e.g. Author of CL-<mumble> library) feel free to let me know
what it is so I can include it in the attribution. But if you don't
have one, don't let that stop you.
-Peter
P.S. No guarantees that I'll be able to use every blurb in or on the
book as Apress may have limits on how many they can fit. But I'll
certainly put them all up on the web site.
[1] <http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/blurbs.html>
--
Peter Seibel ·····@javamonkey.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
Peter Seibel <·····@javamonkey.com> writes:
> Part II in the "make Peter feel good about the last two years of his
> life",
Oh, I'm so sorry to hear, Peter; I had no idea...
--
Duane Rettig ·····@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
Duane Rettig <·····@franz.com> writes:
> Peter Seibel <·····@javamonkey.com> writes:
>
>> Part II in the "make Peter feel good about the last two years of his
>> life",
>
> Oh, I'm so sorry to hear, Peter; I had no idea...
Heh. That's sort of funny since that's one of the the things that my
copy-editor is constantly fixing: last -> previous; indeed I've
started checking every occurence of "last" in the drafts I send her.
Guess I need to start doing it to my emails too.
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@javamonkey.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
Peter Seibel <·····@javamonkey.com> writes:
> Duane Rettig <·····@franz.com> writes:
>
> > Peter Seibel <·····@javamonkey.com> writes:
> >
> >> Part II in the "make Peter feel good about the last two years of his
> >> life",
> >
> > Oh, I'm so sorry to hear, Peter; I had no idea...
>
> Heh. That's sort of funny since that's one of the the things that my
> copy-editor is constantly fixing: last -> previous; indeed I've
> started checking every occurence of "last" in the drafts I send her.
> Guess I need to start doing it to my emails too.
Yes; either "previous", or "most recent" as appropriate (I view the
term "previous" to have an exclusive bound). To take this joke too
far, but at least back into the Lisp realm, let me make this statement
of subtle differences in terms of the CL type system, using Allegro
CL's new excl:normalize-type function that allows one to see what
the normalized form of a type is:
CL-USER(1): (defvar *now* 0.0)
*NOW*
CL-USER(2): (defvar *end-of-life* 75.0) ; s/b better parameterized :-)
*END-OF-LIFE*
CL-USER(3):
CL-USER(3): (deftype years (&optional lo hi)
`(single-float ,(or lo '*) ,(or hi '*)))
YEARS
CL-USER(4): (deftype last-years (range)
`(years ,(- *end-of-life* range) ,*end-of-life*))
LAST-YEARS
CL-USER(5): (deftype previous-years (range)
`(years ,(- *now* range) (,*now*)))
PREVIOUS-YEARS
CL-USER(6): (deftype most-recent-years (range)
`(years ,(- *now* range) ,*now*))
MOST-RECENT-YEARS
CL-USER(7): (normalize-type '(last-years 2))
(SINGLE-FLOAT 73.0 75.0)
CL-USER(8): (normalize-type '(previous-years 2))
(SINGLE-FLOAT -2.0 (0.0))
CL-USER(9): (normalize-type '(most-recent-years 2))
(SINGLE-FLOAT -2.0 0.0)
CL-USER(10):
--
Duane Rettig ·····@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
Peter Seibel <·····@javamonkey.com> writes:
> success", series. After asking you all to tell that you've pre-ordered
> _Practical Common Lisp_, I'm also looking for "blurbs" that Apress can
> use on the back cover of the book (and/or on some pages in the front
Here are some thoughts on blurbs by a fellow Lisper (scroll down to
section "The Quest for Blurbs"):
The book behind the book behind the book...
by Philip Greenspun
http://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/dead-trees/story.html
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
Here's a heartfelt blurb for you:
"One of the most important parts of learning a programming language is
learning its proper programming style. This is hard to teach, but it
can be painlessly absorbed from Practical Common Lisp. Just reading the
practical examples made me a better programmer in any language."
-Peter Scott
I don't really have any impressive quilifications, but here are two
possible quilification strings: "Author of Chemboy chemistry program",
"Author of four [or 'several'] Common Lisp libraries".
I particularly liked the binary IO macros and the unit-testing
framework. It's so simple yet functional that I've used it to test some
of my own programs.
-Peter
·········@gmail.com writes:
> Here's a heartfelt blurb for you:
>
> "One of the most important parts of learning a programming language is
> learning its proper programming style. This is hard to teach, but it
> can be painlessly absorbed from Practical Common Lisp. Just reading the
> practical examples made me a better programmer in any language."
>
> -Peter Scott
Thanks.
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@javamonkey.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
Peter Seibel wrote:
> Part II in the "make Peter feel good about the last two years of his
> life", er I mean the, "help Peter make _Practical Common Lisp_ a huge
> success", series. After asking you all to tell that you've pre-ordered
> _Practical Common Lisp_, I'm also looking for "blurbs" that Apress can
> use on the back cover of the book (and/or on some pages in the front
> of the book if we get enough). I've collected a few so far[1] but in
> the words of Mark Twain, master of humility:
>
> "I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I
> always feel that they have not said enough."
Hee hee.
Well, here's how I feel about the book:
"Finally, a Lisp book for the rest of us."
or
"If you want to learn how to write a factorial function, this
is not your book. Seibel writes for the practical programmer,
emphasizing the engineer/artist over the scientist, subtly
and gracefully implying the power of the language while
solving understandable real-world problems."
But, alas, I'm a no one. Have you thought about soliciting Peter Norvig
or Greenspun or a few others in that league?
To me, the great victory of the book is that, at least in most chapters,
the reading of the chapter feels just like the experience of writing a
program, starting with a little understanding, then having that
understanding grow, like building the shoulders upon which you can then
stand. When you introduced macros as an aside with the testing
framework, I was shocked at how such a simple example made me really
"get" them. Narrative context is extremely powerful and the technical
books that use it are a cut above. Congrats!
Anyway, I preordered. And preordered the "ANSI CL Reference" also by
Apress.
Keith
> So if you've looked at my book on-line and dig it and want to see your
> name in/on _Practical Common Lisp_, send a blurb my way. If you have a
> title or other pithy expression of your qualification to judge a Lisp
> book (e.g. Author of CL-<mumble> library) feel free to let me know
> what it is so I can include it in the attribution. But if you don't
> have one, don't let that stop you.
>
> -Peter
>
> P.S. No guarantees that I'll be able to use every blurb in or on the
> book as Apress may have limits on how many they can fit. But I'll
> certainly put them all up on the web site.
>
> [1] <http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/blurbs.html>
>
Keith Irwin <····@keithirwin.com> writes:
> Have you thought about soliciting Peter Norvig or Greenspun or a few
> others in that league?
Indeed I have thought of it. Check this page out to see how it's
going. ;-)
<http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/blurbs.html>
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@javamonkey.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
Hello Peter,
> Part II in the "make Peter feel good about the last two years of his
> life", er I mean the, "help Peter make _Practical Common Lisp_ a huge
> success", series. After asking you all to tell that you've pre-ordered
> _Practical Common Lisp_, [snip]
I missed part I, so here I am.
I pre-ordered _Practical Common Lisp_ a year and a day ago. (I am *not* complaining,
it's just an indication of interest or something. And my Amazon open order
page doesn't list the year. So right now it shows two orders -- one placed
"January 7" (PCL, 2005-01-07) and one placed "January 8" (just a few minutes
ago). <smiley> )
I am a language tourist, a perennial newbie. I think the reason I ordered
the book was because I all the Lisp books I bought told me how to do stuff
in memory, but I needed to do simple persistence and I/O and nobody described
it. I got pissed and gave up. My ongoing project was trying to turn the sample
code from the Schank case-based-reasoning books into toy systems that I could
actually use. All those supplied exmamples loaded a rule-base or case-base
from the code, did stuff, and wrote to stdout. No user interaction, no persistence
of the modified rule- and case-base. The roadblocks I hit in the simple user-interaction
and data persistence eventually killed my momentum and my interest. I see
in the online draft that the database exercise addresses things like this.
So I guess this is why I ordered it. If you want to try to turn this into
a blurb, I'll work something up.
I have been a member of the ACM since 1977, of the IEEE Computer Society
since 1984, of the IEEE itself since 1990 or so, and have been earning money
as a programmer and DBA continuously since 1975. I have three academic credits
in computer science -- "FORTRAN for Social Scientists" in 1970 at Penn State.
My favorite blurb-like reviews (unfavorable, unfortunately) are these:
"This book fills a much-needed gap." Moses Hadas
"This is not a novel to be set aside lightly. It should be thrown with great
force." -- Dorothy Parker
The Moses Hadas quotation is from http://members.aol.com/JacksonPE/music1/support.htm
and there are a couple of other nasty blurbs there.
Good luck and high regards.
Clark Wilson
> So if you've looked at my book on-line and dig it and want to see
your
> name in/on _Practical Common Lisp_, send a blurb my way. If you have
a
> title or other pithy expression of your qualification to judge a Lisp
> book (e.g. Author of CL-<mumble> library) feel free to let me know
> what it is so I can include it in the attribution. But if you don't
> have one, don't let that stop you.
As a new Lisper, I have found PCL to be very helpful, so I thought I'd
say something (take it or leave it)
" While learning Lisp, one is often refered to the CL HyperSpec if they
do not know what a particular function does, however, I found that I
often did not "get it" just reading the HyperSpec. When I had a problem
of this manner, I turned to PCL every single time - it is by far the
most readable source on the subject that shows you how to program, not
just tell you."
- Philip Haddad
Little long, but you can trim it down if you want. Excellent book,
can't wait until I have it on my shelf :)
--
Certum quod factum.
Philip Haddad
"Philip Haddad" <·············@gmail.com> writes:
>> So if you've looked at my book on-line and dig it and want to see
> your
>> name in/on _Practical Common Lisp_, send a blurb my way. If you have
> a
>> title or other pithy expression of your qualification to judge a Lisp
>> book (e.g. Author of CL-<mumble> library) feel free to let me know
>> what it is so I can include it in the attribution. But if you don't
>> have one, don't let that stop you.
>
> As a new Lisper, I have found PCL to be very helpful, so I thought I'd
> say something (take it or leave it)
>
> " While learning Lisp, one is often refered to the CL HyperSpec if they
> do not know what a particular function does, however, I found that I
> often did not "get it" just reading the HyperSpec. When I had a problem
> of this manner, I turned to PCL every single time - it is by far the
> most readable source on the subject that shows you how to program, not
> just tell you."
> - Philip Haddad
Thanks.
-Peter
--
Peter Seibel ·····@javamonkey.com
Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
Peter Seibel wrote:
> So if you've looked at my book on-line and dig it and want to see
> your name in/on _Practical Common Lisp_, send a blurb my way. If you
> have a title or other pithy expression of your qualification to judge
> a Lisp book (e.g. Author of CL-<mumble> library) feel free to let me
> know what it is so I can include it in the attribution. But if you
> don't have one, don't let that stop you.
; "To the question `What's Lisp good for?', there now is a another
; witty and persuasive answer:
;
; Please don't assume Lisp is only useful for Databases, Unit Test
; Frameworks, Spam Filters, ID3 Parsers, Web Programming, Music
; Shoutcasting Servers, Music Shoutcasting Clients, HTML Generation
; Interpreters and HTML Generation Compilers just because these
; are the only things happened to be implemented in the book
; ``Practical Common Lisp'."
start quoting Tobias C. Rittweiler :
> ; "To the question `What's Lisp good for?', there now is a another
> ; witty and persuasive answer:
> ;
> ; Please don't assume Lisp is only useful for Databases, Unit Test
> ; Frameworks, Spam Filters, ID3 Parsers, Web Programming, Music
> ; Shoutcasting Servers, Music Shoutcasting Clients, HTML Generation
> ; Interpreters and HTML Generation Compilers just because these
> ; are the only things happened to be implemented in the book
> ; ``Practical Common Lisp'."
I don't know; if I saw something like that on the back of a book, I wouldn't
automatically assume it was useful for a green programmer. Sounds a bit
heavy...
Svein Ove Aas wrote:
> start quoting Tobias C. Rittweiler :
>
> > ; "To the question `What's Lisp good for?', there now is a another
> > ; witty and persuasive answer:
> > ;
> > ; Please don't assume Lisp is only useful for Databases, Unit
> > ; Test Frameworks, Spam Filters, ID3 Parsers, Web Programming,
> > ; Music Shoutcasting Servers, Music Shoutcasting Clients, HTML
> > ; Generation Interpreters and HTML Generation Compilers just
> > ; because these are the only things happened to be implemented
> > ; in the book ``Practical Common Lisp'."
>
> I don't know; if I saw something like that on the back of a book,
> I wouldn't automatically assume it was useful for a green
> programmer. Sounds a bit heavy...
Heavy because of the context to KMP's quote? But I don't think that
KMP's one is an ultimative prerequisite to get past the irony, not
at all. Hmm. Or do you know of many other books spanning such a wide
range of domains?
--tcr.
start quoting Tobias C. Rittweiler :
> Svein Ove Aas wrote:
>
>> start quoting Tobias C. Rittweiler :
>>
>> > ; "To the question `What's Lisp good for?', there now is a another
>> > ; witty and persuasive answer:
>> > ;
>> > ; Please don't assume Lisp is only useful for Databases, Unit
>> > ; Test Frameworks, Spam Filters, ID3 Parsers, Web Programming,
>> > ; Music Shoutcasting Servers, Music Shoutcasting Clients, HTML
>> > ; Generation Interpreters and HTML Generation Compilers just
>> > ; because these are the only things happened to be implemented
>> > ; in the book ``Practical Common Lisp'."
>>
>> I don't know; if I saw something like that on the back of a book,
>> I wouldn't automatically assume it was useful for a green
>> programmer. Sounds a bit heavy...
>
> Heavy because of the context to KMP's quote? But I don't think that
> KMP's one is an ultimative prerequisite to get past the irony, not
> at all. Hmm. Or do you know of many other books spanning such a wide
> range of domains?
>
I don't *think* that was what I meant.
Imagine a non-programmer who's looking for a first language, browsing a
bookshop. He comes across various books with names such as "C for dummies",
which only promises to teach you a little about how C works, and then...
Then he comes across PCL, where the blurb claims it's about doing everything
under the sun. It isn't the thickest book, either; clearly it isn't meant
for newbies, but for people who already know Lisp.
Okay, I'm not saying most, or even a majority, of those browsers would think
that. I do believe some of them would, though; a person who has no idea
what Lisp is won't think "Hey, the book uses some simple examples"; he'll
think "Hey, that kind of application takes months, if not years, in any
language *I've* heard of."
My 11 �re, anyhow.
Svein Ove Aas wrote:
> Imagine a non-programmer who's looking for a first language, browsing
> a bookshop. He comes across various books with names such as "C for
> dummies", which only promises to teach you a little about how C
> works, and then...
>
> Then he comes across PCL, where the blurb claims it's about doing
> everything under the sun. It isn't the thickest book, either; clearly
> it isn't meant for newbies, but for people who already know Lisp.
>
> Okay, I'm not saying most, or even a majority, of those browsers
> would think that. I do believe some of them would, though; a person
> who has no idea what Lisp is won't think "Hey, the book uses some
> simple examples"; he'll think "Hey, that kind of application takes
> months, if not years, in any language *I've* heard of."
Yeah, but that's on purpose. What's bad on that? I don't get your point
in the above argumentation. Do you actually disagree on anything? (Or,
mind you, if you find `disagree' too strong: Are You Still In Doubt?)
[Svein Ove Aas <·········@aas.no>, Mon, 24 Jan 2005 00:47:32 +0100]:
> Imagine a non-programmer who's looking for a first language, browsing a
> bookshop. He comes across various books with names such as "C for dummies",
> which only promises to teach you a little about how C works, and then...
>
> Then he comes across PCL, where the blurb claims it's about doing everything
> under the sun. It isn't the thickest book, either; clearly it isn't meant
> for newbies, but for people who already know Lisp.
But is PCL intended for non-programmers? When I read some of the
(early) on-line drafts I got the distinct impression that it is
written for those who already know some C-ish language (including
Java). In that case the blurb might actually be a useful filter.
(Though I don't like that blurb either, because of the gratuitous
repetition - "Servers and Clients", "Interpreters and Compilers" would
be nicer. And I wouldn't trust someone who labels his own answer both
"witty" and "persuasive".)
(And, I should add, most of the things mentioned seem to be all those
things under the sun that I don't care about at all.)
Albert.
Albert Reiner <·······@tph.tuwien.ac.at> writes:
> [Svein Ove Aas <·········@aas.no>, Mon, 24 Jan 2005 00:47:32 +0100]:
> > Imagine a non-programmer who's looking for a first language, browsing a
> > bookshop. He comes across various books with names such as "C for dummies",
> > which only promises to teach you a little about how C works, and then...
> >
> > Then he comes across PCL, where the blurb claims it's about doing everything
> > under the sun. It isn't the thickest book, either; clearly it isn't meant
> > for newbies, but for people who already know Lisp.
>
> But is PCL intended for non-programmers?
If you want an introduction for non-programmers, try:
The Little LISPer (or The Little Schemer if you're so inclined).
http://www.isbn.nu/0023397632
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0023397632/104-6368211-9722332
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=4879
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Nobody can fix the economy. Nobody can be trusted with their finger
on the button. Nobody's perfect. VOTE FOR NOBODY.
Svein Ove Aas schrieb:
> I don't *think* that was what I meant.
> Imagine a non-programmer who's looking for a first language, ...
Exactly that happened to me when I first vistit the Uni-library. I have
in mind to find a book about computer languages and had an Apple with
z80 card at home.
> Okay, I'm not saying most, or even a majority, of those browsers would think
> that. I do believe some of them would, though; a person who has no idea
> what Lisp is won't think "Hey, the book uses some simple examples"; he'll
> think "Hey, that kind of application takes months, if not years, in any
> language *I've* heard of."
Then I find a nice green book and judge by cover, without knowing what
happens. It was the book about a simultan block-world and it was about
lisp.
The following other languages (and the books) I first look for a kind of
a block-wolrd and say something like this: Hey, they need years to do a
block-world... followed by a long search for an interpreter and its box.
That time a computer was very expensive and so unreachable, while the
Apple offers some basic (10 A=15; 20 goto 50; etc). Can you imagine how
I feel? The last program on this Apple knows "(" and ")" and some simple
commands and he resides now two stairs below.
stefan