Customer Reviews

Successful Lisp: How to Understand and Use Common Lisp

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First, this is most emphatically, not a book for beginners. There's an assumption that you are already familiar with programming ideas at a reasonably high level. If you know Python well, or Perl+OO, or C++ or Java, you're probably going to be able to work through it. If you've only used VisualBasic, you might be hurting. That's fine with me, it meant I could ready every chapter, and not skip the "boring stuff," which potentially would mean I'd lose little tidbits of insight.

Overall, I found the book a good survey of the language, presented in an excellent order. I do wish there had been a "project" attached, as it really only gives you the flavor of the language. I feel like I could read most Lisp code now and understand it, but I'm not sure that I could structure and write an application quite yet. The content, for what its goals are, is good, unfortunately it falls short of giving a programmer a full taste of large Lisp programs, and honestly, if you're writing 10 line programs, why use Lisp?

Also, as the book goes on, and perhaps this is more organizational than a sign of anything, the chapters seem to get shorter and shorter, until they are nearly tiny. Perhaps some could be combined together, but I get the distinct impression that the author simply got tired and didn't put in everything that he could have at the end. Perhaps a second edition could tackle a project in the last few chapters, integrating the more advanced concepts into the issues addressed by an application. This would move the book way up in usefulness for me.

Please don't take some of these criticisms as invalidating the book, as it's excellent writing for what it is trying to accomplish. I only wish it was trying to accomplish more. It provided me with the background to grok code that other people have written, and begin to explore writing my own. Unfortunately, it ignores some of the big huge issues (like ASDF) that become major issues. Now I feel ready to tackle my own code.

Overall, I'd give the book a B+. What it's missing is that "thread" that ties everything together, which for a programming book, is often an application.

Another Lisp geek heard from. I used this book in a Programming Languages course I taught (SUNY Potsdam, Spring 2008) and I loved it. Students learned Common Lisp from class lectures and this book and, given that they are successfully writing Lisp interpreters, they were well able to do so. The book begins with an introduction (Chapter 3, alone, is worth its weight in gold) and then moves on to advanced topics including compiling and memory management inside the Lisp system. Wade Hennessey's Common Lisp has more detail on the internals but this book is much more accessible.

The writing isn't perfect and the motivation for all the powerful techniques provided by Common Lisp is sometimes thin. As a text book, the lack of problems can, itself, be a problem. But for learning Common Lisp, this book is both fun and, over all, successful.

This is a nice book. Not a good introduction to programming, but a good introduction to Lisp. The text is clear, and covers the basics of Lisp. You'll still need other books for advanced techniques, though (check paul Graham's On LISP: Advanced Techniques for Common LISP).

Before reading this book I had already become somewhat familiar with Common Lisp: I had read Land Of Lisp and Practical Common Lisp. Successful Lisp is a great book if you don't want a lengthy description about a certain feature in the language. For example, some of the topics that was covered in a 25 page chapter in Practical Common Lisp was covered in about one to two pages in Successful Lisp. Is this a bad thing? Not if you don't want to know all the little details. If you're looking for a to-the-point description about some feature than Successful Lisp is for you. However, if you want to know some specific details you might not find it in this book (though you might in some instances). I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning Common Lisp, but another book before this one would not be a bad idea.

I needed this for an AI course I was supposed to take in the fall. I kept reading this in spare moments and worked with the online compiler at school until I had fairly good handle on lisp.

I've gone through this book online, it is an excellent tutorial which clearly guides you into the world of lisp. I'm very excited to have it in paperback.

Lisp (no it's not a speech impediment) is an old language. But in spite of all of the hype on the new languages like C, C++, and Java, there is still a need and a place for some of the old languages.

FORTRAN, which is still heavily used by the scientific programmers, particularily with cluster computers and COBOL (remember all the stories of the Y2K problem); Lisp refuses to go away. For certain application areas (not the least of which is AI) Lisp is clearly the language of choice. Easily the most important (or well known) pgrogram written in Lisp or using Lisp techniques is AutoCad. This package which has the requirement to handle millions of separate parts in a design is an ideal application for using Lisp which lends itself well to such large projects.

This is an exceedling well written book on the Lisp language. In the fifty-three pages of Chapter three, there is a twelve lesson tutorial on the language which gives the rudiments quickly and painlessly.

Throughout the book there is discussion on not just the language but points on how Lisp might fit particualrly in selected applications.

Great Book.

Great book , one that lisp world needed , to offer another view. Well polished through web feedback quick tutorial or reference recommended for beginner or intermediate programmer.
Well done David

Ok it was on the web a lot and many people have a change to trace the errors and post suggestions, so this is a pretty well written and well polished product, i would recommend to beginner to intermediate programmer , typing is pretty compact so you could use it as a reference but for a A grade tehre should be good exercises.

Great book , one that lisp world needed , to offer another view. Well polished through web feedback quick tutorial or reference recommended for beginner or intermediate programmer.
Well done David