Customer Reviews

The Scheme Programming Language, ANSI Scheme

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

 

 

This book is to Scheme as K & R is to C. Clear, concise, and an invaluable reference and tutorial.

Assumes prior knowledge of programming. I challenge you to find any errors, typographical or otherwise, in this book.

I have used this book to help me with "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs", by Abelson, Sussman, & Sussman, and also with "The Little Schemer", by Friedman & Felleisen.

To be honest, without this book, I would have certainly failed "Programming Introduction", a course I had to attend last semester. This book teaches you everything you need to know about such a complex language as Scheme, giving you deep and abstract examples of recursion. At the end, you will be able to solve the toughest problems using all the elements recursion has to offer, thus making your programs easy and short. However, you must beware of the following. This book has a high technical language, and sometimes, the examples get too complex for one to understand. If you have some experience in programming, this a must for you! However, if you are beginning to programm, or if you are too used to iteration, you can get into this book but will find some trouble understanding some of the recursive structures. However, learning a level of Scheme complexity like the one this book teaches will help you get used to some commands that many other books don't even mention.

This is an excellent book for _REFERENCE_! If you are looking for an introduction to computer programming or Scheme, try _The Little Schemer_ by Daniel Friedman and Matthias Felleisen, _Scheme and the Art of Programming_ by George Springer and Daniel Friedman, and finally Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Abelson et.al.. somewhere along the way, Dybvig's book becomes an essential text for reference. I use it whenever I work with Scheme because it defines the entire language within its mere 230 pages. Any Scheme programmer should have this in his/her collection.

While I have nothing against this book, I think it's a bit misguided. It's too dry as an introduction to Scheme, too elementary for someone trying to become a wizard, and as a reference it's no better than the "Revised Report on the language Scheme" (R5RS) that you can get online for free.

If you don't know Scheme, buy "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs", and after reading it, you can go directly to R5RS. If you want a readable reference book, you're better off buying Paul Graham's "ANSI Common Lisp", even though it's not strictly about Scheme.

A few words only: this book is wonderful. It is a "must read". I like Lisp. I migrate to Scheme and this book was my companion. If you want to learn Scheme, this book is for you, really.

I found this book quite useless. I ama beginner with scheme, though I have written LISP and Haskell before.

The parts of scheme I already understood it did not really clarify much, and the parts I did not understand it did not usefully explain. In that sense it did not match the promise of the title: other books in the "The X Programming Language" model do actually introduce you to the language in a usable manner.

For example the sections on macros and continuations are models of terse unclarity. In general the book fails to clearly explain new concepts, and even the early examples are too advanced for a book which is meant to explain the programming language.

This book may be of some use to someone who is a reasonably advanced scheme programmer who wants to get a few new ideas.

However as an introduction to scheme it is in my opinion a total failure. I felt it was more of a vehicle for the author to show off all the nifty coding hacks he could invent than a disciplined attempt to produce a useful book.

There are numerous better introductions to the language on the web, and the R5RS or R4RS documents do a better job of telling you what is in the language.