6 ms·

A Common Lisp Bookshelf

84 points by momo-reina 13y ago

arh68 13y ago
Wow, I'm a little surprised. I took the _exact_ same path all the way up to PAIP. It's eerie to read your thoughts on a blog that isn't yours. Anyway, the CLQR [1] is by far the most useful CL book I've found. It's small enough to print and bind yourself, and the pages on LOOP & the type hierarchy are just pure typography. I recently finished Let Over Lambda (finished the first read-through, anyway), and I almost wish I had started with it. CL is the C of the lambda calculi, but it didn't 'click' until the final chapters of LoL. With a sufficiently smart compiler (and by compiler I mean sets of macros), CL can do damn near anything. ANSI Common Lisp is a great book, too, but I found the chapters oddly arranged (chapters 12,13 need to come first, maybe). [1] http://clqr.boundp.org/ http://clqr.boundp.org/
- momo-reina 13y ago
  Thanks for the heads-up, I wasn't aware of CLQR. Will definitely check it out. LoL is definitely one of the major highlights in my reading plan.
dgroves 13y ago
The Little Schemer, The Seasoned Schemer, The Reasoned Schemer, by Daniel P. Friedman All 3 should really be among those great classics. ;-)
dschiptsov 13y ago
Practical CL (written with Java mindset) is a waste of time, compared to PG's ANSI CL which has more idiomatic, subtle examples. Then On Lisp, of course. HtDP should go before SICP. HtDP2 is a much better reading than old HtDP. In both books exercises must be done. PAIP is a decent reading, but mr. Norvig, it seems, dislikes macros and recursion and prefers strictures and loops.) btw, all the books are "available" on piratebay, if you are not too strict or american.)
- momo-reina 13y ago
  I had a few discussions with some guys at #lisp, they looked over some code I'd written that was recursion-heavy, and they were of the mind that since Tail-Call Optimization is not in the ANSI standard and therefore implementation dependent one should be careful when using them. Now that totally changes if you're writing Scheme...
  - dschiptsov 13y ago
    All non-toy CL implementations do TCO nowadays. http://0branch.com/notes/tco-cl.html http://0branch.com/notes/tco-cl.html Anyway, it is worthwhile to practice writing recursive solutions (beginning with Scheme) to understand possible pitfalls in case of non-tail recursion, and then, proudly, switch to fixed-space looping techniques.)
    - momo-reina 13y ago
      Yeah I've blown the stack more times than I can recall when using non-tail recursion. I do enjoy recursion, it seems like a clean and elegant solution, though I'm ridiculously preoccupied with writing non idiomatic code. Pascal Costanza has an interesting opinion[1] on why TCO wasn't included in the ANSI standard. [1]http://www.p-cos.net/lisp/guide.html http://www.p-cos.net/lisp/guide.html
    - lispm 13y ago
      There are a few problems with TCO in Common Lisp: * some platforms don't provide useful support (in the History it were some stack-oriented Lisp Machines, nowadays it is the JVM - see ABCL) * there is no consensus how it should be invoked, how its effect should be reported by a compiler, how the user should be noted about limitations (example: LispWorks limits the number of variables), ... * it is not a good fit with Common Lisp, since the language supports all kinds of dynamic constructs: dynamic binding, unwind-protect, ... It is not clear how this should interoperate with TCO in CL. * it makes debugging more diffcult (backtraces, trace, ...)
      - 13y ago
agentultra 13y ago
I actually found the Little/Reasoned/Seasoned Schemer series to be rather enlightening even as an experienced programmer (Little Schemer can seem a little basic at first but the principles it teaches are sound and applicable outside of Lisp programming as well).
- momo-reina 13y ago
  Jao, author of Geiser, talks about the impact they had on his development in his post A Scheme Bookshelf[1]. Are there any CL equivalents? [1]http://programming-musings.org/2007/01/31/a-scheme-bookshelf/ http://programming-musings.org/2007/01/31/a-scheme-bookshelf...
  - agentultra 13y ago
    There aren't equivalents that I know of, but the book did start off as the Little Lisper and the recent edition that I have does have examples translated to CL in the footnotes.
  - mheathr 13y ago
    The Little Schemer and Reasoned Schemer are tremendously fun reads. Little Schemer's writing and presentation style is the standard by which I compare all technical books now. The books happen to use scheme as their teaching platform but the books are entirely about communicating the concepts that happen to be a part of scheme. The way the Little Schemer teaches recursion is absolutely brilliant. If I found myself teaching an intro programming class that would be a part of the curriculum as it is short and communicates the concept in a way that is inescapable while not being dry whatsoever and can be entirely read in a few short settings at most. By the way, I know from personal experience that at least the majority of the books listed in Jao's scheme bookshelf can be readily worked through in a Common Lisp that supports full TCO, which according to an article from 2011 (http://0branch.com/notes/tco-cl.html http://0branch.com/notes/tco-cl.html) is at least CMUCL SBCL CCL Allegro LispWorks I happen to have used SBCL, but I imagine the others would work just as well for these purposes. Having not worked through them, I cannot confirm whether Programmer avec Scheme or Lisp in Small Pieces can be worked through in CL with slight modifications to the source but I do not see why not. Google suggests that there does not exist a translation of Programmer avec Scheme anywhere, and no reviews are available on either amazon.fr or amazon.com; that is unfortunate.
jessaustin 13y ago
Amazon links with no sneaky affiliate crap? Awesome!
- tjr 13y ago
  What do you find sneaky about affiliate links?
  - jessaustin 13y ago
    There is nothing sneaky per se about affiliate links. I certainly expect them on most sites. I have wondered, however, about HN links to what were essentially affiliate-link farms. It seems to muddle the purpose of interaction on HN: is the link here because it is interesting, or because it might make somebody a few dollars? I think if gaming HN becomes common, HN won't be as valuable to all of us. So it's something of a moral duty to punish attempts at gaming. (Commercial attempts, anyway. If it's for the lulz then it's probably OK.)
    - jlarocco 13y ago
      If it's interesting enough that significant numbers of people click through then I'm not sure it matters.
tonetheman 13y ago
Great post, I am wanting to head down this path. I am really wanting to get Lisp in Small Pieces but is it super costly. Maybe I will look at Let Over Lambda.
asgard1024 13y ago
Though will mostly repeat what others have said, here it is: ANSI Common Lisp from Paul Graham is also a good CL textbook. I bought it as a complement to Practical Common Lisp and it also has a nice quick reference at the end. Having read both On Lisp and Let Over Lambda, of those, I would recommend On Lisp more because it has more practical applications of macros, LOL is much more esoteric/playful/abstract, and not everybody is into that sort of thing.
fsck--off 13y ago
A good book for experienced Lispers (because it's out of date, it's not for beginners) is Allen's Anatomy of Lisp. Good luck finding a copy, though. http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Lisp-McGraw-Hill-computer-science/dp/007001115x http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Lisp-McGraw-Hill-computer-scie... And then there are the original Lambda papers: http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html
microcolonel 13y ago
SICP isn't Common Lisp, @momo-reina.
- momo-reina 13y ago
  I included it because I felt it was too good to leave out despite the fact that it uses Scheme. Lisp in Small Pieces is also mostly Scheme, though some CL features are covered in detail (I was look for some excuse for it to make the cut). I'll edit the post though and note those two things to avoid potential confusion.
brudgers 13y ago
Link to Second Edition [draft] of How to Design Programs: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/ http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/
- 01Michael10 13y ago
  Your link is to the current release of the book NOT the draft version as explained on the site... "Note: this document is the current release of HtDP/2e. It is updated in conjunction with PLT software releases, roughly in sync with semester spans. It is thus well-suited for courses. In contrast, the current draft changes on a frequent basis; it should be consulted when people discover problems and/or errors in this document. If such flaws exist in both documents, please report them to the first author."
  - brudgers 13y ago
    Check the links for Chapters (< 8 n 13).
mrottenkolber 13y ago
I really loved LoL! Might be a tad esoteric but gopes very deep into some very powerful and underused areas of CL.
ruricolist 13y ago
Keene's "Guide to CLOS" is good for understanding how CLOS was intended to be used. (Actually, since I read it, I use CLOS less, since I have a better sense of what it's good for.)
- ajarmst 13y ago
  I came here to say this. Full text of title: Object-Oriented Programming in COMMON LISP: A Programmer's Guide to CLOS
Raphael_Amiard 13y ago
About "On Lisp" and "Lisp in small pieces", the author has the order backwards, "On Lisp" is a much easier book to apprehend, and deals with less advanced concepts. In "On Lisp" you'll learn how to leverage macros. In LISP you'll learn how to implement them.
pnathan 13y ago
Personally, I don't think Let over Lambda and On Lisp are super advanced or hardcore. I found On Lisp very readable not too long after I got rolling with Common Lisp (after quite a few years programming experience, though). Of course, both books have great concepts that still make me muse for a moment over the nature of code. Unlike the author, I found Practical Common Lisp to be the lamp for my path into Lisp, and have no qualms about recommending it to other people.
fractallyte 13y ago
Don't forget 'Successful Lisp' by David Lamkins (http://psg.com/~dlamkins/sl/ http://psg.com/~dlamkins/sl/) - in printed-book or HTML versions. Chapter 3 is an excellent 'nutshell' introduction to Common Lisp. The rest of the book, aside from covering various details of CL, provides a wide-ranging overview of the modern Lisp ecosystem, from editors to UIs. I found it a valuable complement to the other books noted here, but somehow it doesn't get much mention!

84 points by momo-reina 13y ago

arh68 13y ago

Wow, I'm a little surprised. I took the _exact_ same path all the way up to PAIP. It's eerie to read your thoughts on a blog that isn't yours. Anyway, the CLQR [1] is by far the most useful CL book I've found. It's small enough to print and bind yourself, and the pages on LOOP & the type hierarchy are just pure typography. I recently finished Let Over Lambda (finished the first read-through, anyway), and I almost wish I had started with it. CL is the C of the lambda calculi, but it didn't 'click' until the final chapters of LoL. With a sufficiently smart compiler (and by compiler I mean sets of macros), CL can do damn near anything. ANSI Common Lisp is a great book, too, but I found the chapters oddly arranged (chapters 12,13 need to come first, maybe). [1] http://clqr.boundp.org/ http://clqr.boundp.org/

momo-reina 13y ago
Thanks for the heads-up, I wasn't aware of CLQR. Will definitely check it out. LoL is definitely one of the major highlights in my reading plan.

dgroves 13y ago

The Little Schemer, The Seasoned Schemer, The Reasoned Schemer, by Daniel P. Friedman All 3 should really be among those great classics. ;-)

dschiptsov 13y ago

Practical CL (written with Java mindset) is a waste of time, compared to PG's ANSI CL which has more idiomatic, subtle examples. Then On Lisp, of course. HtDP should go before SICP. HtDP2 is a much better reading than old HtDP. In both books exercises must be done. PAIP is a decent reading, but mr. Norvig, it seems, dislikes macros and recursion and prefers strictures and loops.) btw, all the books are "available" on piratebay, if you are not too strict or american.)

momo-reina 13y ago
I had a few discussions with some guys at #lisp, they looked over some code I'd written that was recursion-heavy, and they were of the mind that since Tail-Call Optimization is not in the ANSI standard and therefore implementation dependent one should be careful when using them. Now that totally changes if you're writing Scheme...
- dschiptsov 13y ago
  All non-toy CL implementations do TCO nowadays. http://0branch.com/notes/tco-cl.html http://0branch.com/notes/tco-cl.html Anyway, it is worthwhile to practice writing recursive solutions (beginning with Scheme) to understand possible pitfalls in case of non-tail recursion, and then, proudly, switch to fixed-space looping techniques.)
  - momo-reina 13y ago
    Yeah I've blown the stack more times than I can recall when using non-tail recursion. I do enjoy recursion, it seems like a clean and elegant solution, though I'm ridiculously preoccupied with writing non idiomatic code. Pascal Costanza has an interesting opinion[1] on why TCO wasn't included in the ANSI standard. [1]http://www.p-cos.net/lisp/guide.html http://www.p-cos.net/lisp/guide.html
  - lispm 13y ago
    There are a few problems with TCO in Common Lisp: * some platforms don't provide useful support (in the History it were some stack-oriented Lisp Machines, nowadays it is the JVM - see ABCL) * there is no consensus how it should be invoked, how its effect should be reported by a compiler, how the user should be noted about limitations (example: LispWorks limits the number of variables), ... * it is not a good fit with Common Lisp, since the language supports all kinds of dynamic constructs: dynamic binding, unwind-protect, ... It is not clear how this should interoperate with TCO in CL. * it makes debugging more diffcult (backtraces, trace, ...)
    - 13y ago

agentultra 13y ago

I actually found the Little/Reasoned/Seasoned Schemer series to be rather enlightening even as an experienced programmer (Little Schemer can seem a little basic at first but the principles it teaches are sound and applicable outside of Lisp programming as well).

momo-reina 13y ago
Jao, author of Geiser, talks about the impact they had on his development in his post A Scheme Bookshelf[1]. Are there any CL equivalents? [1]http://programming-musings.org/2007/01/31/a-scheme-bookshelf/ http://programming-musings.org/2007/01/31/a-scheme-bookshelf...
- agentultra 13y ago
  There aren't equivalents that I know of, but the book did start off as the Little Lisper and the recent edition that I have does have examples translated to CL in the footnotes.
- mheathr 13y ago
  The Little Schemer and Reasoned Schemer are tremendously fun reads. Little Schemer's writing and presentation style is the standard by which I compare all technical books now. The books happen to use scheme as their teaching platform but the books are entirely about communicating the concepts that happen to be a part of scheme. The way the Little Schemer teaches recursion is absolutely brilliant. If I found myself teaching an intro programming class that would be a part of the curriculum as it is short and communicates the concept in a way that is inescapable while not being dry whatsoever and can be entirely read in a few short settings at most. By the way, I know from personal experience that at least the majority of the books listed in Jao's scheme bookshelf can be readily worked through in a Common Lisp that supports full TCO, which according to an article from 2011 (http://0branch.com/notes/tco-cl.html http://0branch.com/notes/tco-cl.html) is at least CMUCL SBCL CCL Allegro LispWorks I happen to have used SBCL, but I imagine the others would work just as well for these purposes. Having not worked through them, I cannot confirm whether Programmer avec Scheme or Lisp in Small Pieces can be worked through in CL with slight modifications to the source but I do not see why not. Google suggests that there does not exist a translation of Programmer avec Scheme anywhere, and no reviews are available on either amazon.fr or amazon.com; that is unfortunate.

jessaustin 13y ago

Amazon links with no sneaky affiliate crap? Awesome!

tjr 13y ago
What do you find sneaky about affiliate links?
- jessaustin 13y ago
  There is nothing sneaky per se about affiliate links. I certainly expect them on most sites. I have wondered, however, about HN links to what were essentially affiliate-link farms. It seems to muddle the purpose of interaction on HN: is the link here because it is interesting, or because it might make somebody a few dollars? I think if gaming HN becomes common, HN won't be as valuable to all of us. So it's something of a moral duty to punish attempts at gaming. (Commercial attempts, anyway. If it's for the lulz then it's probably OK.)
  - jlarocco 13y ago
    If it's interesting enough that significant numbers of people click through then I'm not sure it matters.

tonetheman 13y ago

Great post, I am wanting to head down this path. I am really wanting to get Lisp in Small Pieces but is it super costly. Maybe I will look at Let Over Lambda.

asgard1024 13y ago

Though will mostly repeat what others have said, here it is: ANSI Common Lisp from Paul Graham is also a good CL textbook. I bought it as a complement to Practical Common Lisp and it also has a nice quick reference at the end. Having read both On Lisp and Let Over Lambda, of those, I would recommend On Lisp more because it has more practical applications of macros, LOL is much more esoteric/playful/abstract, and not everybody is into that sort of thing.

fsck--off 13y ago

A good book for experienced Lispers (because it's out of date, it's not for beginners) is Allen's Anatomy of Lisp. Good luck finding a copy, though. http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Lisp-McGraw-Hill-computer-science/dp/007001115x http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Lisp-McGraw-Hill-computer-scie... And then there are the original Lambda papers: http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html

microcolonel 13y ago

SICP isn't Common Lisp, @momo-reina.

momo-reina 13y ago
I included it because I felt it was too good to leave out despite the fact that it uses Scheme. Lisp in Small Pieces is also mostly Scheme, though some CL features are covered in detail (I was look for some excuse for it to make the cut). I'll edit the post though and note those two things to avoid potential confusion.

brudgers 13y ago

Link to Second Edition [draft] of How to Design Programs: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/ http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/

01Michael10 13y ago
Your link is to the current release of the book NOT the draft version as explained on the site... "Note: this document is the current release of HtDP/2e. It is updated in conjunction with PLT software releases, roughly in sync with semester spans. It is thus well-suited for courses. In contrast, the current draft changes on a frequent basis; it should be consulted when people discover problems and/or errors in this document. If such flaws exist in both documents, please report them to the first author."
- brudgers 13y ago
  Check the links for Chapters (< 8 n 13).

mrottenkolber 13y ago

I really loved LoL! Might be a tad esoteric but gopes very deep into some very powerful and underused areas of CL.

ruricolist 13y ago

Keene's "Guide to CLOS" is good for understanding how CLOS was intended to be used. (Actually, since I read it, I use CLOS less, since I have a better sense of what it's good for.)

ajarmst 13y ago
I came here to say this. Full text of title: Object-Oriented Programming in COMMON LISP: A Programmer's Guide to CLOS

Raphael_Amiard 13y ago

About "On Lisp" and "Lisp in small pieces", the author has the order backwards, "On Lisp" is a much easier book to apprehend, and deals with less advanced concepts. In "On Lisp" you'll learn how to leverage macros. In LISP you'll learn how to implement them.

pnathan 13y ago

Personally, I don't think Let over Lambda and On Lisp are super advanced or hardcore. I found On Lisp very readable not too long after I got rolling with Common Lisp (after quite a few years programming experience, though). Of course, both books have great concepts that still make me muse for a moment over the nature of code. Unlike the author, I found Practical Common Lisp to be the lamp for my path into Lisp, and have no qualms about recommending it to other people.

fractallyte 13y ago

Don't forget 'Successful Lisp' by David Lamkins (http://psg.com/~dlamkins/sl/ http://psg.com/~dlamkins/sl/) - in printed-book or HTML versions. Chapter 3 is an excellent 'nutshell' introduction to Common Lisp. The rest of the book, aside from covering various details of CL, provides a wide-ranging overview of the modern Lisp ecosystem, from editors to UIs. I found it a valuable complement to the other books noted here, but somehow it doesn't get much mention!