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The Little Schemer - 4th Edition Paperback – December 21, 1995
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- Print length216 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherThe MIT Press
- Publication dateDecember 21, 1995
- Grade level12 and up
- Reading age18 years and up
- Dimensions9.04 x 6.94 x 0.51 inches
- ISBN-100262560992
- ISBN-13978-0262560993
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About the Author
Matthias Felleisen is Trustee Professor in the College of Computer Science at Northeastern University.
Product details
- Publisher : The MIT Press; fourth edition (December 21, 1995)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 216 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0262560992
- ISBN-13 : 978-0262560993
- Reading age : 18 years and up
- Grade level : 12 and up
- Item Weight : 12 ounces
- Dimensions : 9.04 x 6.94 x 0.51 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #126,999 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6 in Lisp Programming
- #293 in Computer Software (Books)
- #893 in Mathematics (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors

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Daniel P. Friedman has been a Professor of Computer Science in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University for nearly half a century and is the author of many books published by the MIT Press, including The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer (with Matthias Felleisen); The Little Prover (with Carl Eastlund); The Reasoned Schemer (with William E. Byrd, Oleg Kiselyov, and Jason Hemann); and The Little Typer (with David Christiansen).

Matthias Felleisen grew up in Germany and came to the United States in 1980 at first and in January 1984 for good.
In 1987, he received his doctorate from Daniel P. Friedman, with whom he had also rewritten The Little Lisper, his first book. At this point, The Little Lisper has been in print for over 40 years, an incredible age in the fast-lived world of programming and programming languages. The book covers the fundamental topic of recursive programming in an entertaining dialog style. While the book summarizes the high level ideas as a collection of ten commandments, the reader must work through the material and formulate lessons on his or her own.
Felleisen spent from 1987 through 2001 at Rice University in Houston, Texas, a bustling, always growing city of friendly people. He conducted research on every kind of topic in programming languages; data structures and algorithms for the translation process; the mathematical theory of behavioral equality; and the design of large systems. Many of his ideas came to him while he swam his daily miles in the pool of West University Place, a small town within Houston.
One particularly important idea is due to Carrie, the baby sitter that he and his wife used to hire. The sitter would often work on her high school math problems while Felleisen and his wife would go to the symphony or the theatre. One evening Felleisen noticed that the baby sitter had not made any progress on her homework while they had been out for three hours. He showed the baby sitter how to solve her problems, using the ideas in The Little Lisper. The success was surprising and wonderful. The baby sitter's grades jumped dramatically, and Felleisen and his research team started work on a curriculum that synthesizes computer science and mathematics for novice programmers. Felleisen and his doctoral students wrote a book on this idea, How to Design Programs, and spent almost two decades educating teachers and faculty colleagues about it. For this work, Felleisen received the Karl Karlstrom Award in 2009, the major recognition by the professional computer science organization (ACM) for individuals who make critical contributions to the field.
In 2001, Felleisen moved to Boston, Massachusetts where he teaches at Northeastern University. He continues to conduct research in programming languages and train PhD students in this central field of computer science.
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The book is structured as a series of questions and answers. Each page has several questions on the left hand side, with answers on the right hand side. The overall interpretation of the book is that you can read this without a computer, using pencil and paper to work through the many questions in the book.
As the reader progresses they will continue to develop and reimplement many useful tools in Scheme that become more and more practical as the text goes on. What is great about this method is the pacing and the steady revealing of topics and good practices presented by the author. Because they gradually accustom the reader to topics like recursion, list operations, and lambda, by the time they show how define is unneccessary in Scheme due to the Y Combinator this rather challenging concept seems somewhat intuitive.
Overall I think this is one of the greatest computer science books I have ever read. Sure it may not formally define things or be the absolute easiest text to read on the Scheme language itself, but this book should not be used as a reference product - it should be used as a tool bye which the reader strengthens their fundamentals in computer science and programmer, whether or not they ever touch Scheme again.
As a reader you will quickly grasp the unique format of this book. It is light-hearted enough to remain unintimidating, but moves quickly enough to get across an impressive array of knowledge.
As others have mentioned, recursive thinking is more demonstrated than directly taught, which I found very effective.
The final chapters are mind bending and wonderful. It addresses monumental historical theories from Gödel, Turing, and Church while keeping its consistent, simple tone. Only after you've understood an idea fully is its historical significance revealed, and only tangentially to the subject matter at that!
I commend the authors for their innovative teaching strategies. I was lucky to attend a Racket course overseen by Felleisen after reading this which was a wonderful experience.
Thank you for providing so much value to your customers. I'll definitely buy used books from you again.
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Word of warning though... this was the first book that I've ever seen in the Q&A style. At first it was quite annoying and made me think why did they write it this way, this is childish. But now I think WOW every hard topic book should be written like this. It's mindblowingly good. Don't give up!!
This book is highly entertaining and will get you programming functional in no time. Hats off to the authors!
Estoy muy satisfecho con el servicio rápido y eficiente de amazon de Mèxico.
Ahora si todos las librerías online de Mèxico van a tener que subir su nivel de desempeño.
いくつか疑問が残るものの、何とか最後まで食らいついた。お腹いっぱい。続編(The Seasoned Schemer)に進むのは当分先で。
英語の難易度は高くない。唐突に話題が変わって戸惑うことは多かった。対話形式は嫌いだが、先生と生徒の会話に仕立てようとはしてないので、まぁ許せる。
六章と八章では簡単な電卓関数valueを作りますが、これは最も簡単な処理系の作成になっています。最後に数を()の個数で表わしていますが、これは数学基礎論(ペアノの理論)で学習する整数の構成に対応しています。Dedekindの「数について(Essays on the theory of numbers)」の後半部分等が参考になります。また、Reasoned Schemerの七章と八章に出てくるバイナリー計算機の話と合わせて数値計算の基礎理論を見ることが出来るようになっています。
十章では再帰処理が出来る小さなScheme処理系(Little Schemer)を作成します。これが表紙の絵で象徴的に描かれています。Little Schemerではdefineが使えないので無名の高階関数としてYコンビネータ(表紙の象が象徴しているLambda関数)を導入し、このYコンビネータが再帰される本体の関数(象が持っている本)を使って再帰関数を実現する必要があります。これが九章でやっている話で、Smullyanの"To Mock a Mockingbird"に書かれているSKIコンビネータ理論の森の鳥達の話に対応します。そのようなSKIだけだとさすがにプログラミングが大変すぎるので妥協点として小さなScheme処理系を提示しています。それでもちょっとした再帰関数を作るのに難解なYコンビネータが必要になります。defineが使えるReasoned Schemerの処理系と比較することで、処理系の充実とプログラミングの労力の間のバランスを体験学習するようになっています。defineがあれば再帰処理にYコンビネータは不要になります。
この本は前半十章に相当し、後半十章はSeasoned Schemerに書かれています。その後、マクロを勉強すれば第三巻に相当するReasoned Schemer(miniKanren)に進むことが出来ます。それぞれのタイトルがそこで作成する処理系の性質を表わしています。姉妹編のLittle JavaではデザインパターンのGoF本に出てくるピザパターンを利用した小さな処理系によって関数型言語のリスト処理をエミュレートしています。また、Little MLerではStandard MLという関数型言語を使って型推論を説明しています。これらの幅広い話題の全ての基礎にあたるのが本書です。なお、このシリーズではアルゴリズムについては殆ど触れていないのでSICPをさらに読むことをお勧めします。
」を短かい文章でまとめるなど、わかりやすくするための工夫をこらしてあります。スタイルにクセはありますが良書だと思います。
1つ1つのセンテンスをごく短かくまとめてあり、洋書であるものの読み易いです。
(内容とは関係ないですが、各章の表紙イラストが絵本のようでかわいくてGood)








