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Land of Lisp (2010)

landoflisp.com

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Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#41

Post by Oreb »

bsg75 wrote: post #25
jhbadger wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you like this sort of thing, here are some others in a similar humorous style for other languages. 1. Kaufman, Roger. A FORTRAN Coloring Book (probably the first funny programming book -- from 1978). 2. Lipovača, Miran. Learn You A Haskell for Great Good. 3. Hebert, Fred. Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good (inspired by the Haskell book). 4. Felleisen, Matthias. Realm of Racket (basically Land of Lisp for Racket.…

> nobody's done a "Commonwealth of Clojure" Higginbotham, Daniel. Clojure for the Brave and True. https://www.braveclojure.com/

I loved Land of Lisp, but found Clojure for the Brave and True annoying. To me, LoL is hilarious, while CftBaT tries to be funny, but fails.

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#42

Post by emmanueloga_ »

bsg75 wrote: post #25
jhbadger wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you like this sort of thing, here are some others in a similar humorous style for other languages. 1. Kaufman, Roger. A FORTRAN Coloring Book (probably the first funny programming book -- from 1978). 2. Lipovača, Miran. Learn You A Haskell for Great Good. 3. Hebert, Fred. Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good (inspired by the Haskell book). 4. Felleisen, Matthias. Realm of Racket (basically Land of Lisp for Racket.…

> nobody's done a "Commonwealth of Clojure" Higginbotham, Daniel. Clojure for the Brave and True. https://www.braveclojure.com/

I suspect this is one of the best books on Clojure out there ("suspect": I'm working through a couple of different ones on and off).

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#43

Post by emmanueloga_ »

jhbadger wrote: post #15
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…

If you like this sort of thing, here are some others in a similar humorous style for other languages. 1. Kaufman, Roger. A FORTRAN Coloring Book (probably the first funny programming book -- from 1978). 2. Lipovača, Miran. Learn You A Haskell for Great Good. 3. Hebert, Fred. Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good (inspired by the Haskell book). 4. Felleisen, Matthias. Realm of Racket (basically Land of Lisp for Racket.…

Realm of Racket is such a strange book. It feels like they tried really hard to follow LOL or "why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby" aesthetics/structure, with mixed results.

Also, I know this is silly but I remember the book followed this guy who was supposed to be "the hero" that was always sad or concerned, or frowning, in every picture, right on to the end of the book (or so I remember it...). I know it is silly but that put me down :-p

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#44

Post by emmanueloga_ »

Oreb wrote: post #41
bsg75 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody's done a "Commonwealth of Clojure" Higginbotham, Daniel. Clojure for the Brave and True. https://www.braveclojure.com/

I loved Land of Lisp , but found Clojure for the Brave and True annoying. To me, LoL is hilarious, while CftBaT tries to be funny, but fails.

Hmmm I think I remember a few failed jokes but I found the actual coverage of the language pretty good, wdyt? I guess for a book like this you are not really looking for a comedy best seller, no? :-)

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#45

Post by lispm »

Jach wrote: post #10
nothrabannosir wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Is there such a thing as a bad Lisp book?

there are not many really bad ones, but there are some and I'm not going to mention them. ;-)

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#46

Post by lispm »

_ph_ wrote: post #40
Jach wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.) The Art of the Metaobject Protocol is truely a delightful book. While it is probably not very useful for practical programming - it isn't meant as a teaching book for begin…

> the programming style

There is a lot of programming style to be learned from the Art of the Metaobject Protocol.

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#47

Post by lispm »

Riverheart wrote: post #30
drcode wrote: post #18

Author of LOL here, if there are any questions!

Hey Dr Barski. I'm actually reading your book right now. I do have a question. How do you write Lisp effectively? And by that I mean, Lisp seems to be written from the inside out due to the nested lists. Is there something that makes it more natural to write: (trim-string (get-string '(some data))) Or do you need to know that you're going to call trim before you get the string? Hope that makes sense.

how do you write it in other languages?

   sin(cos(10.4));
or

   v = 10.4;
   c = cos(v);
   s = sin(c);
in Lisp one might write:

   (let* ((v 10.4)
          (c (cos v)))
     (sin c))
really old style:

   (prog (v c s)
     (setq v 10.4)
     (setq c (cos v))
     (setq s (sin c))
     s)

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#48

Post by didibus »

Riverheart wrote: post #30
drcode wrote: post #18

Author of LOL here, if there are any questions!

Hey Dr Barski. I'm actually reading your book right now. I do have a question. How do you write Lisp effectively? And by that I mean, Lisp seems to be written from the inside out due to the nested lists. Is there something that makes it more natural to write: (trim-string (get-string '(some data))) Or do you need to know that you're going to call trim before you get the string? Hope that makes sense.

The way I do it, is that in my editor, I can type:

'(some data|)

Where | is my cursor.

And then I have a keybinding that moves my cursor to the front and wraps around like so:

(| '(some data))

So I can type the next thing:

(get-string| '(some data))

Press it again:

(| (get-string '(some-data)))

And so on.

That way, even though the code is visually nested, I can write it in logical order from what eval first to what eval last. A good editor for editing lisp code makes that possible, as I showed, and many other operations.

Basically, get yourself accustomed to a good Lisp editor such as Emacs and I'm sure you'll find that problem will disappear. For me, it's even more productive now typing wise, because I can make more structural edits to my code, which is way faster.

Re: Land of Lisp (2010)

#50

Post by _ph_ »

lispm wrote: post #46
_ph_ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.) The Art of the Metaobject Protocol is truely a delightful book. While it is probably not very useful for practical programming - it isn't meant as a teaching book for begin…

> the programming style There is a lot of programming style to be learned from the Art of the Metaobject Protocol.

Yes, from Amop :) But not from the Keene book.
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