I've recently started a journey of learning common lisp. I'm a
Algol-lineageally "tainted" programmer of some number of years, and
have, spurred on by some ruby usage, decided to finally learn this
language.
I'm a long-time emacs guy, but have limited myself largely to using
it, installing pre-made .el files, and basic (~/.emacs, not menu
based) configuration.
I've bought Peter Seibel's book, and have been going through that,
Paul Graham's pages, and David Lamkins "Successful Lisp" pages, the
cll FAQ, and the ALU "learning lisp" pages. I've lurked in here for a
bit as well, so please pardon my trepidation at such basic questions.
All this is good, and I feel I'm slowly "getting it", but one thing
I've really wanted that I haven't come across is some sort of pairing
of concepts with exercises that reinforce the concept. All the books
and web resources are wonderful, but I was weaned on (pre ANSI) K&R
type books, which I found great for the 5-6 exercises, questions, etc.
that when solved, would "drive home" that which was just learned.
So, is there some canonical tutorial or somesuch that I've overlooked?
Also, when I get to that point, is c.l.l an appropriate spot to post
code snippets for advice on improvement, style, idiomatic usage, etc?
Many thanks,
Michael
--
Michael Campbell
>All the books
>and web resources are wonderful, but I was weaned on (pre ANSI) K&R
>type books, which I found great for the 5-6 exercises, questions, etc.
>that when solved, would "drive home" that which was just learned.
Paul Graham's book, Ansi Common Lisp, takes that approach. The material
in Ansi Common Lisp tends to be a bit harder than Practical Common
Lisp. Also, it sticks to the standard (no using libraries or compiler
extensions). It is not available online.
>Also, when I get to that point, is c.l.l an appropriate spot to post
>code snippets for advice on improvement, style, idiomatic usage, etc?
Yes.
I know the feeling of wanting those 5-6 exercises. I first learned
Lisp from _Lisp_, Winston and Horn, 3rd ed. (2nd is okay too), which is
a textbook in that style.
From: Robert Uhl
Subject: Re: Looking for rudimentary learning exercises
Date:
Message-ID: <m3slxylwmr.fsf@4dv.net>
Michael Campbell <················@gmail.com> writes:
>
> I'm a long-time emacs guy, but have limited myself largely to using
> it, installing pre-made .el files, and basic (~/.emacs, not menu
> based) configuration.
I've found that as my Common Lisp improves, I have started extending
emacs _much_ more than I used to. You might be surprised at the sort of
things you start to come up with!
In my case, I wrote code such that (browse-url) uses w3m except within
gnus, where it uses Firefox, unless I use C-x w to open the current
URL. Minor little hack, I know, but it's more than the copy-paste emacs
customisations I've done in the past.
--
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
In every civilisation, software will advance to such a level that to the
average manager, a desktop environment looks like a game of memory. And
they always cheat. --Pim van Riezen
Robert Uhl <·········@NOSPAMgmail.com> writes:
> Michael Campbell <················@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> > I'm a long-time emacs guy, but have limited myself largely to using
> > it, installing pre-made .el files, and basic (~/.emacs, not menu
> > based) configuration.
>
> I've found that as my Common Lisp improves, I have started extending
> emacs _much_ more than I used to. You might be surprised at the sort of
> things you start to come up with!
>
> In my case, I wrote code such that (browse-url) uses w3m except within
> gnus, where it uses Firefox, unless I use C-x w to open the current
> URL. Minor little hack, I know, but it's more than the copy-paste emacs
> customisations I've done in the past.
>
I have to second that! Same thing almost exactly. I've used emacs for
years, but never really tried much elisp. Since starting to learn CL,
I've also started to do much more emacs customization. For me, its a
simple set of functions which allow me to see *.doc, *.pdf and *.ps
files with a single keystroke from within emacs (converting these
files to a text representation rather than calling an external
program).
Tim
--
Tim Cross
The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is
to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you
really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out!
Michael Campbell <················@gmail.com> writes:
> All this is good, and I feel I'm slowly "getting it", but one thing
> I've really wanted that I haven't come across is some sort of pairing
> of concepts with exercises that reinforce the concept. All the books
You may check this site:
The Dynamic Learning Center
http://www.dynamiclearningcenter.com/
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools:
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
Thank you for this link!
I was looking for a exercise pool of this sorts for some time now and I
think that maybe gathering links like this into one, linkable pool
could lead the way for other lisp-beginners like myself and the author
of this listing.
Please, keep those kind of links coming for us to learn.
If you have some other books about other languages you may try
solving their excercises . I did that with : Accelerated C++ and
all of the problems presented there were so easy solvable with Lisp
that it expanded my ego how good i am .Problems introduced by
the C++ language itself was avoided for obvious reason .
Also try Touretsky book it has plenty of excecises if you're pretty
cool
with your knowledge of lisp try solving the problems by yourself
without
Daves' guidance .
Tic-tac-toe is my favourite one , but there's plenty other good ones
like
craps , moving roby , siblings and so on .
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/dst/www/LispBook/
There's one (un)cool thread at cll about partitions(brekings)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/5e98c1f2acc94bc2
i suggest to try it without looking at other people solutions.
You'll be amazed , how far the lispers could go , from a slow recursive
solution ( that was mine solution but at least i broke the ice , didn't
i?)
to Academic optimization without useless iterations .
Enjoy