Customer Reviews

Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

My copy is worn out, and I sure could use a NEW one...! When I buy a book, I seldom know whether it will become a staple of my library or not. This has, over the years, become part of the most central core. I have worked in LISP off and on for years, and this book unfailingly gets me back on in a hurry. Not only is it the clearest tutorial on LISP I know (it's even a literate, pleasant read!), it has the only discussion of recursion I know that's clear and fun.

I have been involved for three decades now with Lisp and I consider this to be a tremendous introduction to the Language. The author is meticulous in detail and writes with a sharp, witty style. The treatment of Lisp evaluation is classic in clarity and brevity. The author gives good examples throughout the text. His fancy trace utility in the books appendix is useable and an excellent example of Lisp diagnostics.

This is an excellent tutorial. A good place to start before reading any of Graham's books.

Although the book is now out of print, you can use the link below to download the pdf at no expense.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/

I did not know anything about Lisp and this book is teaching me the basics of the language very clearly. You could not ask for a better beginners book. five stars plus...

We had a LISP course (prerequisite for AI) in the university, and our teacher used this book. I immediately fell in love with the language! This book is written in a fun way, that really makes sense. It was only from this book that I mastered the art of recursion (the cat in the hat comes back? the dragon stories?). Everything was fun about this book, you really have the sense that it was made with extreme passion and dedication; something that usually doesn't apply to programming books.

When i decided to buy this book, i knew nearly nothing about Common Lisp other than some myths. As i went deeper in the book; i saw that many of those myths were nothing but only the muds thrown with an ill manner over Common Lisp because of jealousy. Touretzky introduces every concept in a quite pedagogic way giving no more than a newcomer can handle. At the end of each chapter he even treats some advanced topics like tail recursion, macros etc. The only absence in the book, as far as i see, is object oriented programming features - CLOS - and package system which are not critically necessary for a novice so do not expose a serious problem, i think. I strongly recommend this monumental book to everyone who is planning to learn Common Lisp.

This is a great book for those wanting to learn Lisp.
In the first part of the book, when describing functions, the author stays away from Lisp and any real programming notation, using diagrams to show some of the fundamental concepts -- which are explained in such a clear way that everything become so obvious! Later he switches to Lisp, telling you it's a "different notation for the same ideas".
The text is always clear, short and right to the point.

It would be simply awesome if you could order this book on-demand from the original publisher. If that were the case I would pay well for a fresh new copy. I have currently worked through the .pdf version available online ([...] and I can honestly say that this book is far better in content and, more importantly, in presentation than any other programming book I have eve read (and I have read many). After tiring from tinkering with languages such as Java (big and burdensome), C/C++ (great languages provided you like writing long, and I mean long programs, to get basic things done), C#/ASP (I hate Microsoft and will never go back) and PHP (a hack par non) I wanted to try another language that rekindled my desire to program. Enter Lisp (as well as Python, but that's another story) and Professor Touretzky's book. I tried Graham's On Lisp but found it too pedantic and verbose (maybe later), I tried Steele's Common Lisp (good but misses the mark for beginners), I tried Seibel's Practical Common Lisp (good but remind me of a Murach hack book on how to program in XYZ with little emphasis on presenting the actual language and more on hey dude here's a cool program), I tried Barski's Land of Lisp (similar to Seibel in that it's cool if you like little explanation of the language with major emphasis on just cut and paste programs), then I came across Touretzky's Common Lisp and now I love the language. The material is presented in a sound logical and user-friendly manner and, more importantly, Touretzky explains the ins-out and how-to's of the language using carefully crafted examples, exercises and well laid out diagrams. If you want to learn a language that will awaken you and teach you how to think about programming in a new light, then I highly recommend reading this book. If you come from another language or languages, you should be able to work through this text in a relatively short period of time and, after this, move on to other books or resources. After this I would recommend Steele's, then Graham, and then Keene (I am currently working through the latter two).

Bottom-line - do your self a favor and buy a used copy or lobby the publisher to provide it on-demand.

"A Gentle introduction to Symbolic Computing" as the name states is a great introduction to Lisp. It starts at the beginning with introducing the reader to the basic concepts of Lisp. Rather then the basic functions it starts with what a function is and how it behaves, the book moves into what a linked list is how it works and how to manipulate it (cons, car, cdr).

While many would rather jump in feet first and write a basic hello world program I personally prefer to understand the basics of what I'm doing and why it works. This book is excellent in that regard. My one problem with this book is that its out of print so you have to find a used copy. The alternative being that the Author/Publishers provide this book for free online, use Google.

The book is useful even if you have programming experience in other languages. It explains important concepts (list, cells, symbols, variables etc) better than many other programming books do.

Highly recommended!