Customer Reviews

Common LISPcraft

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This book is a classic in the Lisp literature. It is extremely readable. Those new to Lisp can gain from this. Good Lisp programming style is emphasized. this book is a reworking of the author's earlier book LispCraft. Ease of reading should be considered this work's greatest asset.

I am the proud owner of eight Lisp books, and this one is at the top of the list for learning the language, because of the exercises, and because Wilensky is a teacher and knows how to teach. You don't learn a language by reading a book, or by reading a specification, but by writing code. The chapters in 'Common Lisp Craft' are short enough to read through in one sitting, but the end of chapter exercises will keep you busy for days. The last two chapters involve real applications, and go much farther than simple beginner exercises.

Three warnings:

1. My copy is 23 years old (1986 to 2009) and environments have changed, the interface with Lisp in Wilensky is totally out of date and pretty much useless.

2. This book alone isn't enough, particularly with respect to macros, quotes, CLOS, and the like, so expect to follow it up with something else from another point of view, like Peter Seibel.

3. These is a solutions manual. Get it. You will need it.

Although the author of the book is teaching my LISP class, the book is very difficult for a beginner to LISP and has almost no actual code to learn from. It tends to be wordy and the examples are abstract and not clear. The author is a really nice guy, but in consencus with many of my other classmates, the book is very hard to learn from and brushes over many topics which I have found covered in greater detail in other texts.

While this is a good book for a reference to the language, there are virtually no examples of code within the book at all. If you are new to LISP, you will not benefit much by buying this.