Customer Reviews

The Seasoned Schemer

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

 

 

This book is the second half of "The Little Schemer". It expects you to have mastered the previous volume, so it starts fast and picks up speed from there.

It covers a lot of ground in a slim volume (just as in "The Little Schemer"). This book introduces the concepts of closures and call-with-current-continuation (among other things).

As with "The Little Schemer", this book's strength is in its socratic instruction method. Lessons are written and illustrated as conversations between the reader and the instructor (in question/answer format). While this sounds strange, it is actually surprisingly effective as a means of learning the material. It might seem somewhat like rote instruction, but it can often frame foreign concepts in a rememberable fashion.

Neither of these books require much in the way of background or familiarity with the material. They were created as a means of teaching non-programmers to program in Scheme. However, I think they hold value for trained programmers as well.

The Seasoned Schemer continues where the The Little Schemer - 4th Edition (a truly marvelous book) left off. It aims to extend the readers understanding of programming techniques and the Scheme programming language. It covers many interesting topics like memoization, the interchangeability of functions and data, mutable state, and programming with continuations.

Unfortunately The Seasoned Schemer has a strong inclination towards inside jokes for people who already know the material. In the process of charming the experienced reader it risks losing novices. How does a reference to Alonzo Church using call-with-current-continuation tell the novice that letcc is not available in many Scheme implementations? Why is there no real explanation of when and where to apply the "12th commandment" (use letrec to remove arguments that do not change for recursive application)? Why does a discussion about using closures and functions to model data structures devolve into trivia about circular lists? The text often seems like a sequence of such programming gems littered in a book with few clues for eyes unaccustomed to recognizing gems.

People familiar with the subject matter will enjoy the charming and concise discussion of fundamental (and often difficult) ideas. Other readers are probably better served by reading a proper text book on programming in Scheme. It's a real pity though, because once you get the inside jokes this really is a fine book! Just don't use it as your first book on programming in LISP like languages.

The book picks up and demonstrates using to letcc (call with current continuation) to speed up delivery of results or to simply forget pending applications and return to an outer list of s-expressions. Additionally there is more using of letrec and the demonstration of of using set!. The final chapter once again looks at creating the language within the language but this time including 'define' and using set! to update closures. If you felt reasonably confident with the Little Schemer you should be fine reading this extension book, and you will likely be much more confident with any lisp like languages having read it.

The Seasoned Schemer continues where the Little Schemer left off introducing local variables via let and it's variations including letrec. Set!, the syntax for changing a variables value is introduced. Continuations, as used for escaping from an computation and for going back to previous position in code are also introduced. There are less references to the accomplishments of famous computer scientists in this book than in the Little Schemer which I found to be disappointing. However, I greatly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone wanting to increase their understanding of the Scheme programming language. Although scheme's vector data type is not introduced, I think you will have enough of an understanding of Scheme after reading this book to make substantial programs.

Dialogue style makes this book fun to read. Leitmotif of food examples keeps the tone light and the reader hungry. Have the number for pizza handy before you sit down for this book.

Focuses on the use of functions in scheme, in an easy reading, enjoyable style. My only minor criticism is that the typographic conventions make the code hard to read. I realize that they serve a purpose, but it made the typesetting ugly.

An admirable work, suitable for reading even if you already "know it all", just because of its approach to teaching.

Silence! stir not! for a whisper
Would affright thy pretty prey;
Not a motion, little lisper,
Else the fish will glide away.