What's your favorite book about Lisp?

Discussion of books and various other resources about Lisp

What's your favorite book about Lisp?

ANSI Common Lisp
16
14%
Practical Common Lisp
35
30%
Common Lisp, The Language
7
6%
The Art of the Metaobject Protocol
2
2%
Object Oriented Programming in Common Lisp
1
1%
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
13
11%
The Little Schemer Series
2
2%
Lisp in Small Pieces
5
4%
Paradigms of Artificial Intelligent Programming
15
13%
Other
19
17%
 
Total votes: 115

findinglisp
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What's your favorite book about Lisp?

Post by findinglisp » Sat Jun 28, 2008 9:33 pm

I was curious what people thought was their favorite book about Lisp. I can't list everything in the poll, so if you have additional ones that I haven't mentioned, add them as a comment.
Cheers, Dave
Slowly but surely the world is finding Lisp. http://www.findinglisp.com/blog/

mmmk
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Jun 28, 2008 11:37 pm

Re: What's your favorite book about Lisp?

Post by mmmk » Sun Jun 29, 2008 9:19 am

On Lisp is missing from the list ;)

LDream

Re: What's your favorite book about Lisp?

Post by LDream » Sun Jun 29, 2008 10:21 am

That's awfully hard, you know. I picked one, but there are at least 4 others I would consider essential ;)

findinglisp
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Re: What's your favorite book about Lisp?

Post by findinglisp » Sun Jun 29, 2008 10:44 am

mmmk wrote:On Lisp is missing from the list ;)
Ack! You're right. I typically don't think of it because I don't have and can't get a printed copy of it (still waiting for Paul to get something over to Apress to republish it, I guess... :roll: ). Anyway, yep, that's a serious omission. The polling module only lets you have 10 choices, though, so adding it would be tough. I have to admit that it's probably in my top 3, along with PAIP and Lisp in Small Pieces.
Cheers, Dave
Slowly but surely the world is finding Lisp. http://www.findinglisp.com/blog/

Unne
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Re: What's your favorite book about Lisp?

Post by Unne » Sun Jun 29, 2008 2:37 pm

If not for Practical Common Lisp I never would've bothered with the language. It's a great book on many levels.

Jacques Chester
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Re: What's your favorite book about Lisp?

Post by Jacques Chester » Sun Jun 29, 2008 8:35 pm

I'm working through ANSI Common Lisp as my holiday project. What it has over PCL is exercises, but the two books have different coverage of what is a pretty ginormous language.

I've found this site useful as a reference when I've finished my own solutions to the exercises.

reuben.cornel
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Re: What's your favorite book about Lisp?

Post by reuben.cornel » Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:29 pm

I don't know if SICP could be classified as lisp book. Yes it does talk about lisp, scheme to be more precise. But it is more of a general computer science book as it uses scheme as a means to explain general concepts.

dlweinreb
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Re: What's your favorite book about Lisp?

Post by dlweinreb » Tue Jul 01, 2008 6:19 am

You might add "Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computing" by David Touretzky, which is particularly good for beginners. However, "Practical Common Lisp" by Peter Seibel is what we give new hires at ITA Software when they arrive and don't know Common Lisp yet. I voted for that (despite my obvious interest in "Common Lisp: The Language", the first edition of which I am a co-author). If you know how to write software and want to learn Common Lisp, "Practical Common Lisp" is your best bet. See http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/.

findinglisp
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Re: What's your favorite book about Lisp?

Post by findinglisp » Tue Jul 01, 2008 8:57 am

dlweinreb wrote:You might add "Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computing" by David Touretzky, which is particularly good for beginners. However, "Practical Common Lisp" by Peter Seibel is what we give new hires at ITA Software when they arrive and don't know Common Lisp yet. I voted for that (despite my obvious interest in "Common Lisp: The Language", the first edition of which I am a co-author). If you know how to write software and want to learn Common Lisp, "Practical Common Lisp" is your best bet. See http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/.
Yea, I should have added that disclaimer that you aren't allowed to vote for your own books. Employees and their immediate families are excluded and all that. :D

I'm actually split between ANSI Common Lisp and Practical Common Lisp. Frankly, I thought that ANSI Common Lisp was a bit more gentle introduction than Practical Common Lisp, but maybe that's because I read ANSI Common Lisp first. That said, they're both excellent, IMO.
Cheers, Dave
Slowly but surely the world is finding Lisp. http://www.findinglisp.com/blog/

skc

Re: What's your favorite book about Lisp?

Post by skc » Tue Jul 01, 2008 9:00 am

Jacques Chester wrote:I'm working through ANSI Common Lisp as my holiday project. What it has over PCL is exercises, but the two books have different coverage of what is a pretty ginormous language.

I've found this site useful as a reference when I've finished my own solutions to the exercises.
I voted for ACL over PCL (although i like them both) for its style, exercises, and appendix B and D.

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