Nicely explained. On a side note, I noticed with deep satisfaction that “git” is used as some kind of curse in the land of Lisp.
It's unclear if it is a curse or a deity. Could be both.
The Land of Lisp
21–30 of 146 posts
Re: The Land of Lisp
#22This book is destined to be a classic programming book, just as "The C programming language", "The Little Schemer" or "Operating systems: Design and implementation".
I would really like to meet Conrad Barski and give him a great hug. And invite him a good beer.
Be sure to read the comic that is on the bottom of the page!!
Now, to be honest, a quicker or more practical introduction to Lisp would be the "Practical Common Lisp" book which is also superb. However, Land of Lisp is a charming book that makes you smile and feel like a nerdy (in a good way) 12 years old kid in 1982 who just got as a birthday present a brand new Commodore-64 and is eager to read the manuals!
Re: The Land of Lisp
#23Re: The Land of Lisp
#24There's also Realm of Racket https://realmofracket.com/ Which maybe is shorter? I don't recall.
The real question is whether it has a sequel to Grand Theft Wumpus in it
"The most violent programming example ever put on a textbook!"
http://w3.sista.arizona.edu/classes/ista450/spring15/project...
Re: The Land of Lisp
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really liked going through Realm of Racket with my 11 year old daughter. It pretty much is the same format. It made me miss the days of typing code from a book and hit run. (Well run never really worked then it was hours of debugging but that taught me so much)
Ha yes! Bonus points when the book is for IBM Basic, and you're using a Commodore 64. Argggggg!
LOL. I had an Atari 130XE so examples for IBM Basic, Apple ][ and Commodore didn't work either!
Even worse if the examples were for the Spectrum, which had an even more peculiar dialect!
Re: The Land of Lisp
#26I've read this book, and what I love about it is that it really brings to mind the programming books of my youth, when nobody would argue that programming should be fun. It's goofy, has bad jokes, and you learn something. Having said that, the code style seemed quite idiomatic compared to some of the other Lisp I've seen (although I'm no expert), so I wasn't sure how valuable the lessons were.
did you mean "idiosyncratic"?
Re: The Land of Lisp
#27I've read most of it too, but not sure it shows a lot of lisp's strengths. A lot of the programs I read them over and thought that I could do the same thing in significantly less Python code. I'm not sure what should be fixed if anything though.
I read through LoL, and then most of Clojure for the Brave and True. I think one of LoL's strong points is that it only ever explains things in the domain of Lisp. The Clojure book kept showing samples of what you were doing in other languages, and it kind of broke my initial ability to get in the mindset.
Re: The Land of Lisp
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
> seemed quite idiomatic I'm not sure how that would be a bad thing. Did you mean un idiomatic?
A common complaint about Lisp code in general is that programmers tend to write code that is idiosyncratic [ED: I previously used the word "idiomatic" here in reply to the OP but was conflating terms, making this post rather irrelevant but at least it provoked a discussion] (i.e. rather than looking like templated design patterns with standard names, the program is heirarchically built of modules in a domain-specific…
I know what you are saying, but that is not what is meant by idiomatic Lisp. Not by Lispers at least.
Non-idiomatic Lisp is typically written by beginners whose code looks more like the language they are accustomed to using previously. For instance, leaning heavily on a procedural style. And not just beginners, but also seasoned programmers that write object oriented Lisp more akin to static OOP. In other words, designing class hierarchies rather than protocols (using generic functions).
What you describe is more of a side effect of the Bipolar Lisp Programmer[1]:
> This is a BBM attitude; it works for me and I understand it. It is also the product of not needing or wanting anybody else's help to do something.
I haven't read Land of Lisp yet, so I can't really comment as to whether I'd consider it idiomatic Lisp or not. (OP meant "idiosyncratic" anyway, it seems.) Not that I'd be a good judge, anyway.
[1] http://www.shenlanguage.org/lambdassociates/htdocs/blog/bipo...
Re: The Land of Lisp
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
A common complaint about Lisp code in general is that programmers tend to write code that is idiosyncratic [ED: I previously used the word "idiomatic" here in reply to the OP but was conflating terms, making this post rather irrelevant but at least it provoked a discussion] (i.e. rather than looking like templated design patterns with standard names, the program is heirarchically built of modules in a domain-specific…
"rather than looking like templated design patterns" - that is, the code goes straight to the point instead of being littered with incidental noise and ceremony? How that could possibly be a bad thing? Well, in certain software development subcultures ceremony might be a norm, but not in general.
From what I have seen, code that "goes straight to the point" is usually poorly thought out, is unmaintanable, has bugs, is difficult to extend to new use-cases, and the developer who wrote it is long gone.
Re: The Land of Lisp
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really liked going through Realm of Racket with my 11 year old daughter. It pretty much is the same format. It made me miss the days of typing code from a book and hit run. (Well run never really worked then it was hours of debugging but that taught me so much)
Ha yes! Bonus points when the book is for IBM Basic, and you're using a Commodore 64. Argggggg!
Oh yes. I had a TRS-80 Color Computer, and the BASIC dialect (though written by MS) was slightly different in some details, so I was usually translating things at least a little. Things like color and graphics were completely different from system to system.