Previously: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=841117 including comments by the author.
Also, a sample chapter: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1709600
Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time
21–30 of 53 posts
Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time
#22Folks 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…
Those of you who prefer some kind of GUI, look into Xemacs. It can be set up to respond to your mouse-clicks.
This is puzzling. GNU Emacs has mouse support.
Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time
#23I'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!
Check out his old website
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)
Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any plans to release the book in electronic formats (pdf and epub)?
It 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 )
Yo! No Starch rings a bell. I learned of Jon Stokes 2006 book "Inside The Machine" recently and it seems to be impossible to get in paper or ebook. How can I read it?
Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time
#25I'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!
That looks really cool. I'll definitely grab a copy when it comes out.
Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time
#26I love the concept - is there anything like this for Python?
Check 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/
It's free, you can download a PDF, and you can hit:
http://learncodethehardway.org/
To ask questions if you get stuck.
If you already know how to code it might be too simple for you.
Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time
#27Folks 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…
Emacs will be even better when you can use Scheme instead of Elisp.
Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any plans to release the book in electronic formats (pdf and epub)?
It 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 )
Thank you, I'll be looking forward to the release of the electronic versions of the book.
Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time
#29Is this going to be using Lisp bindings for cross-platform graphics libraries like SDL? ( 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.
Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time
#30Folks 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…
While some minor details are off (the GUI -> Xemacs thing was probably more accurate several years ago), you're basically right. Emacs Lisp is kind of a crappy Lisp dialect, but it's a very accessible way to learn the basics, and if you use Emacs, quite immediately useful.
I wish I had a better suggestion for learning elisp, but I mostly picked it up from the Emacs Lisp info file included with Emacs (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/elisp.htm...). I'd been reading SICP already though, so I already understood the fundamentals of the Lisp family. The best intro I've seen to Lisp is _The Little Schemer_, but keep in mind that Scheme is the "clean and minimalistic" dialect (for better and worse).