Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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From: hall@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu (Marty Hall)
Subject: Re: good Lisp textbooks [was: Re: Physics with lisp ?]
Message-ID: <D2v29A.CtJ@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu>
Organization: JHU/APL AI Lab, Hopkins P/T CS Faculty
References: <3fd2fc$kvf@coils.cims.nyu.edu> <WGD.95Jan20195711@martigny.ai.mit.edu> <3fsu0l$843@panix3.panix.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 13:46:21 GMT
Lines: 40

In article <3fsu0l$843@panix3.panix.com> peters@panix.com (Peter Schlemowitz) writes:
>A really great book is, "On Lisp - Advanced Techniques For Common Lisp" 
>by Paul Graham published by Prentice Hall.
>
>This book is not for beginners is a very enjoyable read. 

I agree that this is an outstanding text. However, in this context (a
book for *first* learning Common Lisp), I would state the "is not for
beginners" part a bit more strongly. A few brilliant hackers might
understand closures, macros, and destructive operations right off the
bat, and will appreciate the power this provides. But in my experience
teaching Lisp, most won't, so introducing all these advanced features
to the beginner will only serve to make them think that Lisp is harder
than other languages.  So unless the person has a background in
another Lisp dialect or functional programming (ML, Haskell, etc.), I
would strongly recommend against Graham as the very first text. 

Touretzky (Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation)
and Wilensky (Common Lispcraft) are two reasonable first choices,
IMHO. If the person has an AI background, then Winston and Horn (Lisp)
is also a good choice for a text that focuses on AI examples. Abelson
and Sussman (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) is a
top-notch introduction to programming that uses Scheme, if someone
wants to learn the general ideas of Lisp programming but doesn't yet
need details of Common Lisp syntax. Norvig (Paradigms of AI
Programming) is, like Graham, excellent but a bit more advanced, best
for people with some AI and Lisp background already.

Please don't thinking I am panning Graham's text. In fact, I think it
is outstanding, and has the best treatment of macros I've ever seen
(and I find macros extremely useful in real-life). I just think it is
much too hard for someone who has never seen Lisp, unless they are the
type of person who likes diving into the hairy stuff right away.

> It's to bad there is no source disk.

Note that the sources are available by anonymous FTP from
endor.harvard.edu in /pub/onlisp/.
						- Marty
(proclaim '(inline skates))
