7 ms·
Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time
- wwortiz 16y agoPreviously: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=841117 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=841117 including comments by the author.
- adulau 16y agoThank you for the reference. I hope that the publishing date is still October 2010... as it was foreseen already 1 year ago.
- drcode 16y agoYes that's accurate- It's all done and printing as we speak.
- mcn 16y agoAlso, a sample chapter: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1709600 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1709600
- drcode 16y agoI'm the author- The book is printing as we speak and should be hitting the stores late Oct/early Nov. Around that time a lot more info on the book will also be available at my new site landoflisp.com. I'm really happy with how it turned out and I hope the new site (which I don't want to launch before the book is truly ready) will entice more folks to learn Lisp!
- hvs 16y agoGreat to hear! I've been waiting for this book for a long time. I had it on pre-order at Amazon until they cancelled the order earlier this year, then pre-ordered it again in September this year. It's great to see an author coming out with a new Lisp book, since it is my favorite language that I never get to use at my day job. Congratulations!
- drcode 16y agoThanks- And apologies for the earlier cancellation.
- TY 16y agoAny plans to release the book in electronic formats (pdf and epub)?
- m0nastic 16y agoConsidering the publisher, it should be available in pretty much every digital format (I think all of their books are).
- ktf 16y agoIt will be available as a PDF, epub, and mobi. The epub and mobi versions tend to lag about a week behind the PDF because of conversion time, but we push those files out to your account as soon as they're ready. (Assuming you pick the book up from No Starch directly: http://nostarch.com/lisp.htm http://nostarch.com/lisp.htm)
- mahmud 16y agoWhy don't you come talk about it at the D.C. HN Meetup this Monday? It would be a pleasure to have you over, Dr. Barski. http://www.meetup.com/JoinHNDC/ http://www.meetup.com/JoinHNDC/
- drcode 16y agoSure- I'll be there (I was at the meetup a couple months ago BTW)
- mahmud 16y agoPerfect! See you then.
- jf 16y agoYou should have come to DevHouse:DC - Conrad gave a lightning talk about his book there :D
- mahmud 16y agoWould love to, but I clocked 50k airline miles in the last 12 months :-/
- makmanalp 16y agoMD in cardiology and writing a lisp book? Would you mind sharing your story with us? It sounds like you might have had an interesting life!
- jmatt 16y agoCheck out his old website http://www.lisperati.com/ http://www.lisperati.com/ I remember he was also an active contributor when arc was first released[1]. Thanks for all the great contributions. (drcode: I hope you don't mind me posting this info) [1] http://arclanguage.org/user?id=drcode http://arclanguage.org/user?id=drcode
- zedshaw 16y agoThat looks really cool. I'll definitely grab a copy when it comes out.
- lkrubner 16y agoFolks looking for a practical place to start with Lisp should consider using the Emacs editor. I just recently went down this road myself. I am now a huge fan. For about 6 months in 2006 I made Emacs my default editor. (Xemacs, actually). But I did not learn Lisp, at that time, and there are other IDE's out there that have a nicer GUI. So I started using simple text editors like Kate, and then sometimes NetBeans. And yet, for years, I've been wanting to work with a fully scriptable editing environment. I often have the need to grab a large amount of text data, transform it in various way, and save the finished product. I kept thinking that at some point I would learn sed and awk, but I never got around to it. Usually, if I needed to make some quick changes to text, I'd write a one-off PHP script to do what I needed. Then I got interested in Clojure, and through Clojure I got familiar with Lisp's syntax. Then it occurred to me to go back to using Emacs. So now it is my main editor, again, my default programming environment. I use it for everything. And I've learned Emacs Lisp. Every single day, the combination of Emacs and Lisp helps me be more productive. Way back in 1999, I started to learn PHP. One thing that made PHP easy to learn, back then, was that I did not need to compile it. I only needed to put it on a server running PHP, and that was most servers. It was an easy programming environment to step into. Lisp is like that when you are working in Emacs. You can write a line of Lisp anywhere you like, then invoke it with a special key command. You can write quick one-off scripts to move text around inside a file. Or, if you like some code and want to reuse it, you can just save it as a function and put it in your .emacs file and then that function is available to you whenever you are running Emacs. I have heard of Emacs greatness since at least 1999, and yet somehow, not till this year did I dive deep and learn both it and Lisp. I realize now, everything that people have said about Emacs over the years, it really is true - to have a programming environment where every element of the environment can be programmed and re-programmed using the language of the environment gives you an extremely powerful tool. If anyone is looking for a simple place to get started with Lisp, I would say, simply, use Emacs. We all need to edit stuff, and so your work will provide you with a practical place to practice your Lisp, everyday. Those of you who prefer some kind of GUI, look into Xemacs. It can be set up to respond to your mouse-clicks. Also, if you'd like to learn about Emacs and Lisp, the book that Robert J Chassell wrote is a very good introduction: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Programming-Emacs-Lisp/dp/1882114027/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1287092649&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Programming-Emacs-Lisp/dp...
- cal5k 16y agoI love the concept - is there anything like this for Python?
- zedshaw 16y agoCheck out his book since it looks like it might be good, but if you really want to learn Python and need a good place to start, I've written one: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/ http://learnpythonthehardway.org/ It's free, you can download a PDF, and you can hit: http://learncodethehardway.org/ http://learncodethehardway.org/ To ask questions if you get stuck. If you already know how to code it might be too simple for you.
- cal5k 16y agoThanks for the suggestion :-) I had a ton of experience with C and Java back when I was in high school and somewhat through university, but after I finished university I fell out of it. Your book looks like a great introduction for a complete newcomer to programming, but I've picked up "How To Think Like a Computer Scientist" and it seems to be more on my level. You are an amazing person, however, for releasing all of your hard work for anyone to learn from!
- instasaint 16y agoCan the code in this book be converted to Python3 by using 2to3 tool? I don't know Python or I'd have answered this question myself.
- jesusabdullah 16y agoThis might be the ticket: http://inventwithpython.com/ http://inventwithpython.com/ . I haven't gone through it really, but the goal of teaching through making games is similar, and I do know he wrote a pretty good clone of gorillas (http://github.com/jesusabdullah/gorillas http://github.com/jesusabdullah/gorillas is my own copy, if it interests you).
- cal5k 16y ago
- metamemetics 16y agoIs this going to be using Lisp bindings for cross-platform graphics libraries like SDL? ( http://code.google.com/p/lispbuilder/wiki/LispbuilderSDL http://code.google.com/p/lispbuilder/wiki/LispbuilderSDL ) Here's to hoping you get to build 2D/3D games and not 1970s style terminal games you will never show anyone.
- stuhacking 16y agoFor what it's worth, I heard that at least part of the book covers a bit of html5 for browser games with a lisp back end. The sample chapter that is linked elsewhere uses a graph drawing library that produces png representations of the game state. (This actually builds on the material of a previous chapter, wherein you develop the graph->png utility.) This is from the perspective of someone who hasn't yet bought the book. I really need to get to that.
- drcode 16y agoThe book includes a chapter on building a crude web server and then uses it to build a graphical HTML5 game as a finale. I considered options like SDL, but the fact is that there's so many graphics APIs in the world (and in the Lisp world) that I didn't want to force the reader to learn one they might not ever have practical use for. Knowing how a web browser & HTML5 work, on the other hand, is universally useful.
- metamemetics 16y ago>build a graphical HTML5 game as a finale sounds great, I'm interested. My favorite programming class was an intro course in python where we generated fractals, programmed maze solvers, built conway's game of life, and had an option of creating a 3D pool game for final project, etc: http://cs.northwestern.edu/~akuzma/classes/EECS110-s10/index.htm http://cs.northwestern.edu/~akuzma/classes/EECS110-s10/index... Although the course is intended for people who have never programmed before, it allows you to do a lot of cool stuff by deliberately not explaining how the libraries used are implemented. I don't think using external libraries in tutorial books is bad, as long as you change\vary the library being used each problemset or chapter. Then no one library is enforced as canon. The student just learns the generalized methodology of hooking in with other people's code and writing a decoupled application, which are essential practical programming. I think it's OKAY to risk throwing in slightly off-topic components in a learning-by-doing book. The best "django" book I've seen had a chapter all about jQuery\JavaScript. Games are still always good problem domains for enhancing student engagement even if they are text-based. Having now looked at the sample chapter, I'm sure you did a great job and I'll put it on my to buy list.
- Shostakovich 16y agoWhy "Lisp" if it is book about "Common Lisp" only? It is misleading.
- adamc 16y agoIs not Common Lisp a Lisp?
- Shostakovich 16y ago... 'Europe' book about Britain only.
- lispm 16y agoIn the main heritage line of Lisp (Lisp 1.5, MacLisp, Lisp Machine Lisp, CL), Common Lisp is still THE common Lisp. One can run run old code from the 1960s with relatively little changes. Neither with Scheme and Clojure you can do that. Both are Lisp dialects. Clojure is basically incompatible with every other Lisp and porting Lisp code to and from Clojure is basically done by completely reimplementing it. So, Common Lisp is not THE Lisp, but the common Lisp.
- vukk 16y agoSince the author is Conrad, the well balanced human, and the book is named LoL, does it show how to implement the first Lands of Lore? :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lands_of_Lore:_The_Throne_of_Chaos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lands_of_Lore:_The_Throne_of_Ch...
- zephyrfalcon 16y agoCoincidentally (or maybe not), Let over Lambda has the same acronym... [http://letoverlambda.com/ http://letoverlambda.com/]
- drcode 16y agoYou just blew my mind :-)
- kenjackson 16y agoDr Code, will this book be on Safari Online? How do you get paid if I read the book online or have it bookmarked as one of my favorites?
- drcode 16y agoI guess I get paid some kind of fee from your subscription :-) Haven't seen that website before- pretty cool.