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Having read several of these, I know they're good. LYAH and LYSE are both VERY good. Like, really, really good. They are free, but if they weren't, they'd make
by qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Having read several of these, I know they're good.
LYAH and LYSE are both VERY good. Like, really, really good. They are free, but if they weren't, they'd make this bundle worth it on their own.
Likewise, The Land of Lisp and The Realm of Racket are great if you want to think like a Lisper/Schemer. TLOL, however, is a better book, covering (I think) more stuff. TROR also suffers a library dependance, but I don't especially LIKE Racket, so take this with a grain of salt.
If Hemmingway Wrote Javascript is an excellent exploration. You'll see a variety of code, some good, some bad, some smart, some dumb, and all of it mind-expanding and entertaining. It demonstrates Javascript's remarkable flexability, and argues that there is no one way to write good JS: you should use the right tool for the job. It doesn't substantiate this well, but it's fun all the same.
I've heard good things about EQJS, and Write Good Code looks interesting, but I haven't read any of them, so I cannot pass judgement.
But honestly, most of NoStarch's stuff is pretty good. Not as consistently good as O'Reilley, but their best stuff is better than O'Reilley, although not as good as MITPress.
Seriously, if you're ever in Camebridge, visit the MITPress bookstore. It's full of good books, Has excellent staff, and sells off slightly damaged books at discounts that aren't even funny. And even without the discount, it's much cheaper than buying their stuff online.
/shameless-plug
- daturkel 10y agoA +1 for the MIT Press bookstore. Great store with lots of fantastic stuff, from CS to philosophy to artsy magazines.
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoYeah. I want a Humble MITPress bundle. And if fiction's your thing, the MIT Coop accross the street is matched only by Pandemonium Books and Games, and the Harvard Coop, one and two T stops away respectively. ...wait a minute. Lisp was for the large part developed at MIT. The Boston transit system is the T. In lisp, the symbol for truth is T. Coincedence? Probably.
- avindroth 10y agoHijacking top comment, haskellbook.com did more wonders for me than LYAH. HN fawns over that book, surprised it isn't already mentioned. The book is also a pedagogical feat.
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoI'm top comment? Jeez. Anyways, yeah, I'd never heard of HFFP before now, and don't have the spare cash to check it out. It seems neat, though.
- codygman 10y agoThe authors encourages anyone that can't afford the book to contact them through their support link on the Haskellbook.com site to work something fair out.
- sohkamyung 10y agoDespite being an Emacs users for years, I haven't started looking into Lisp. Would "The Land of Lisp" help me get past the C language mindset and see things from the Lisp point of view? I'm not planning to be a expert Lisp programmer, but I do wish to get an understanding of what Lisp does and, who knows, maybe learn enough to start looking at Elisp code and contribute to Emacs.
- fractallyte 10y agoLoL is an excellent introduction to the Lisp way of doing things, and the reader gets a lot of insight into how a Lisp programmer approaches non-trivial problems. While there's a good explanation of Lisp basics, the actual game examples use some pretty advanced coding techniques. It would definitely help to be familiar with recursion. ('The Little LISPer'/'The Little Schemer' is a perfect introduction to recursion.) Conrad Barski's style is enjoyably idiosyncratic, but - despite the illustrations and blurb - this is not a book for the beginning programmer!
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoBut if you've done some C, and maybe a scripting language or two, and are willing to squint at the code a bit, LoL will do you fine. Just make sure you have a handle on recursion.