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Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time

oreilly.com

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Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time

#41

Post by lispm »

Shostakovich wrote: post #38
adamc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is not Common Lisp a Lisp?

... 'Europe' book about Britain only.

In 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.

Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time

#42

Post by zephyrfalcon »

vukk wrote: post #36

Since 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_Ch...

Coincidentally (or maybe not), Let over Lambda has the same acronym... [http://letoverlambda.com/]

Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time

#43

Post by konad »

lkrubner wrote: post #12

Folks 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…

If you want to learn Lisp, I guess Emacs is a good idea.

If you want to transform text in your editor in a Unix-like environment use the appropriate tool - Acme

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_%28text_editor%29

Then you can program your text transforms in any language you like

Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time

#45

Post by drcode »

kenjackson wrote: post #44

Dr 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?

I guess I get paid some kind of fee from your subscription :-)

Haven't seen that website before- pretty cool.

Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time

#46

Post by drcode »

metamemetics wrote: post #29

Is 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.

The 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.

Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time

#47

Post by drcode »

zephyrfalcon wrote: post #42
vukk wrote: post #36

Since 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_Ch...

Coincidentally (or maybe not), Let over Lambda has the same acronym... [ http://letoverlambda.com/ ]

You just blew my mind :-)

Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time

#48

Post by reflexer »

sandGorgon wrote: post #32
lkrubner wrote: post #12

Folks 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…

Dont want to start a religious war here, but how does slimv ( http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2531 ) for vim compare ?

I've used slimv a bit to play with Common Lisp. It's very handy for sending sexps from vim to repl. Not sure about advanced emacs' slime/swank features. I think it's difficult to find a person which used both editors for Lisp coding to make a meaningful comparison.

Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time

#49

Post by metamemetics »

drcode wrote: post #46
metamemetics wrote: post #29

Is 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.

The 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.

>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...

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.

Re: Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time

#50

Post by imd »

konad wrote: post #43
lkrubner wrote: post #12

Folks 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…

If you want to learn Lisp, I guess Emacs is a good idea. If you want to transform text in your editor in a Unix-like environment use the appropriate tool - Acme http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_%28text_editor%29 Then you can program your text transforms in any language you like

It's not as idiomatic as with Acme, but you can program text transforms in any language with Emacs too. Just use C-u M-| (shell-command-on-region).
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