Land of Lisp (2010)

#1

Post by tosh » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

Land of Lisp (2010)
landoflisp.com

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#2

Post by merlincorey » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

This book is beautiful and provides a pretty decent introduction to Common Lisp with a variety of simple games that it builds throughout to demonstrate various techniques.

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#3

Post by Dangeranger » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 10:43 PM UTC

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/

[1] http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#4

Post by ngcc_hk » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

It is a great book.

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#5

Post by nothrabannosir » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 11:07 PM UTC

Dangeranger wrote: post #3

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. I…

I 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.

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#6

Post by externalreality » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 11:21 PM UTC

Wonderful book, read it years ago, and read Grahams Common List the Language, and before that the little lisper, and before that ansi Common Lisp. I don't remember very few of any of those books but hopefully something beneficial remains.

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#7

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 11:53 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#8

Post by nextos » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 11:54 PM UTC

nothrabannosir wrote: post #5

Dangeranger wrote: post #3

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. I…

I 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.

Lisp 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.

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#9

Post by mark_l_watson » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 11:54 PM UTC

I bought this book years ago even though I had already been programming in Common Lisp for 20 years at that time. I really like Conrad Barski's writing and that was sufficient reason to buy the book.

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#10

Post by Jach » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 11:59 PM UTC

nothrabannosir wrote: post #5

Dangeranger wrote: post #3

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. I…

I 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.

Is 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-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.