7 ms·
This book is well worn, dog eared, and on my home office book shelf. While many people criticize it, for legitimate reasons, it is still a fun and wonderful jou
by Dangeranger 7y ago
This book is well worn, dog eared, and on my home office book shelf. While many people criticize it, for legitimate reasons, it is still a fun and wonderful journey through Common Lisp. I wish more books were written in this irreverent and whimsical style.
If however you want a more traditional and "from zero" introduction to Lisp, then "Common LISP - A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation"[0] may be better. If you already know a little bit of Lisp and want to step up your abilities then "Practical Common Lisp"[1] is probably what you are after.
[0] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/ https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/
[1] http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/
- nothrabannosir 7y agoI second the recommendation for Practical Common Lisp, even for complete beginners and newcomers to Lisp. It covers the very basics, and the writing style is accessible and patient.
- nextos 7y agoLisp has such an amazing literature. Aside from those 2, which are truly nice, there's The Little Schemer, SICP, On Lisp, Lisp in Small Pieces, PAIP and many others (like CLtL, The Art of the MOP, etc). I personally think Lisp in Small Pieces is really underappreciated.
- Jach 7y agoIs there such a thing as a bad Lisp book? ;) Maybe there are only ones you're not ready for yet... (I've been unsuccessfully searching for a hardcover of Art of the Metaobject Protocol for a while, I can make myself ready for it once I have it.) In HN tradition where we all recommend every book we've ever read similar to the submitted one (and Land of Lisp is worth reading), an overlooked recently published booklet I found is Common Lisp in the Wild: https://www.darkchestnut.com/book-common-lisp-application-deployment/ https://www.darkchestnut.com/book-common-lisp-application-de... Common Lisp is so flexible in letting you develop the way you want to develop, but if you're a professional programmer looking for a Maven-esque template of "structure your project in this familiar way without sacrificing any of the interactive Lisp dev experience, enumerate version-pinned dependencies, one-step make to build, test, run, deploy the final artifact" like I was that book's suggestions are worth the entry fee and you're left with a stable foundation to deviate from.
- kazinator 7y ago> is there such a thing as a bad Lisp book? Yes, there exists a certain a really awful book from the 1980's about making your own Lisp in C, which has recently been reprinted in essentially its original form.
- analognoise 7y agoOh that sounds exciting, what's it called?
- kazinator 7y agoIt is called Interpreting Lisp by G. Knott. Reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/6qc61v/second_edition_published_interpreting_lisp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/6qc61v/second_edition... Not to be confused with other books from the 1980s about doing Lisp in C, like Lisp: A Portable Implementation by S. Hekmatpour.
- max_wen 7y agoI nearly started working through that, would you mind sharing why you think it is a bad book? thx
- pcr910303 7y agoI’m pretty sure it’s because the lisp that book makes isn’t an exact lisp; There are many features lacking and some fundamental concepts are wrongly implemented; However for developing C skills, it’s pretty good. Wouldn’t recommend learning Lisp with that though.
- max_wen 7y agooh you're correct it is meant to develop C skills not learn Lisp
- 7y ago
- gekkonier 7y agoI do recommend Practical Common Lisp not only for Lisp newcomers. The concepts teached apply to programming in a bigger context. Lisp is here only a vehicle (a very good one).
- Insanity 7y agoI'm going through this book now. It has a different style from LoL but I do find it suits me better. It feels at least more structured :)
- jhbadger 7y agoIf you like this sort of thing, here are some others in a similar humorous style for other languages. 1. Kaufman, Roger. A FORTRAN Coloring Book (probably the first funny programming book -- from 1978). 2. Lipovača, Miran. Learn You A Haskell for Great Good. 3. Hebert, Fred. Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good (inspired by the Haskell book). 4. Felleisen, Matthias. Realm of Racket (basically Land of Lisp for Racket. Oddly, nobody's done a "Commonwealth of Clojure" or "Society of Scheme" yet.)
- ashton314 7y ago1+ for “commonwealth of Clojure”—but shouldn’t there be a j somewhere in that? Cjommonwealth? (Pronounce j like y and it kinda works.)
- bsg75 7y ago> nobody's done a "Commonwealth of Clojure" Higginbotham, Daniel. Clojure for the Brave and True. https://www.braveclojure.com/ https://www.braveclojure.com/
- js8 7y agoI really loved the part where Lady Gaga explained multitasking.
- Oreb 7y agoI loved Land of Lisp, but found Clojure for the Brave and True annoying. To me, LoL is hilarious, while CftBaT tries to be funny, but fails.
- emmanueloga_ 7y agoHmmm I think I remember a few failed jokes but I found the actual coverage of the language pretty good, wdyt? I guess for a book like this you are not really looking for a comedy best seller, no? :-)
- zambal 7y ago
- steveeq1 7y agoWhat are the criticisms of it? Curious.