Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 005.133 EAN: 9780023397639 ISBN: 0023397632 Label: Prentice Hall Manufacturer: Prentice Hall Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 206 Publication Date: March 30, 1989 Publisher: Prentice Hall Sales Rank: 335815 Studio: Prentice Hall
Product DescriptionThere are surprises in store for the diligent reader of this masterful introduction to recursion as a fundamental tool for expressing and solving problems. With wit and wisdom, The Little LISPer unfolds some of the most beautiful concepts in mathematics, computer science, and logic.
The authors' goal is to show that recursive thinking is first of all fun, that it is powerful, and that the programming language Lisp allows one to express ideas recursively and naturally. There are hard problems along the way, but their solution brings mastery of recursive, functional, and meta-linguistic abstractions, developing skills in the underlying creative programming in Lisp. The Little LISPer is self-contained: an interpreter for the language is developed using the tools of the book itself .
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Still one of the best resources for learning Lisp
When I was teaching mathematics at a small college in the 1980's, like everyone else we were expanding our computer science department. In talking with a colleague, our discussions went to the area of programming in Lisp and Prolog. This generated some interest in me about Lisp, so we purchased an inexpensive Lisp interpreter and I read this book. As I worked through the examples, the contrast with Basic and Fortran, the two languages I was familiar with, was striking.
Despite my ... Read More
Rating: - It's a five-star book, but...
...it's been obsoleted by its own fouth edition. No place on the listing for this book do I find a hint that this is the third edition of a book currently in its FOURTH edition. They renamed the book The Little Schemer for the fourth revision. Buy that book instead.
Rating: - There is no better teaching book, anywhere.
The pinnacle of the act of teaching is to be simultaneously clear, simple, interesting, and complete. This is rarely achieved in person, and almost never in writing; "The Little LISPer" achieves it. I believe this defines what a teaching book can be. It is brief. It can be read in snippets, at any pace. It will maintain the interest of anyone who comes to learn. The reader is left ready to write Lisp code, no matter what background precedes it.
I read this book in high school in 1982; ... Read More
Rating: - I concur, one of the best computer book I've ever read
I'm still struggling with lisp, but this book was simple, to the point, and clear. I didnt even get annoyed by his goofy attempts at humor.
Rating: - The best first book on programming in any language.
I gave an earlier edition of The Little LISPer a glowing review in Byte in 1980. It was then the best introductory book on programming, regardless of language, and I still haven't seen anything to compare with it.
The greatest strength of LISP is its firm base in the essentials of the mathematics of computability, including Goedel's recursive functions and Church's Lambda calculus. It uses a single data structure, the linked list, and a minimum of programming primitives, all with ... Read More
