The Reasoned Schemer (The MIT Press) second edition Edition

by Daniel P. Friedman (Author), William E. Byrd (Author), Oleg Kiselyov (Author),

17 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0262535519

ISBN-10: 0262535513

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A new edition of a book, written in a humorous question-and-answer style, that shows how to implement and use an elegant little programming language for logic programming.

The goal of this book is to show the beauty and elegance of relational programming, which captures the essence of logic programming. The book shows how to implement a relational programming language in Scheme, or in any other functional language, and demonstrates the remarkable flexibility of the resulting relational programs. As in the first edition, the pedagogical method is a series of questions and answers, which proceed with the characteristic humor that marked The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer. Familiarity with a functional language or with the first five chapters of The Little Schemer is assumed.

For this second edition, the authors have greatly simplified the programming language used in the book, as well as the implementation of the language. In addition to revising the text extensively, and simplifying and revising the “Laws” and “Commandments,” they have added explicit “Translation” rules to ease translation of Scheme functions into relations.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The Little books are unique in the way they combine deep and subtle ideas with hands-on humorous presentation. "The Reasoned Schemer, " the latest book in the series, is no exception. Friedman, Byrd, and Kiselyov provide a unique presentation of many of the ideas behind logic programming, which is developed as a natural--though subtle--extension of functional programming. For perfecting your programming skills and style you cannot do better than sit at the feet of Friedman and Kiselyov."--Ehud Lamm, Founder of 'Lambda the Ultimate, ' the programming languages weblog

"Contrary to popular belief, logic programming doesn't always mean programming in Prolog. In this groundbreaking book, Friedman and Kiselyov extend Scheme to form a completely new kind of logic programming system, one which is in many ways even more elegant than Prolog. Written in the same classic question-and-answer format as the authors' previous book "The Little Schemer, The Reasoned Schemer" covers goals, first-class relations, interleaved and non-interleaved backtracking, the relationship between relational and functional programming, and much more. Reading this book will not only cause your geek rating to skyrocket and impress all the Cool Kids, it will also open your eyes to a paradigm of programming which most programmers are completely unaware of, but which will undoubtedly play a significant role in the programming systems of the future. More importantly, though, this book is great fun to read and will make you a better programmer."--Michael Vanier, Caltech

"Some programmers are particularly fascinated by new ways of thinking about programming and computation. But few programmers have much experience with logic programming, and fewer still understand its essence. There has never been a more engaging presentation of this material, or a clearer view all the way to the bottom. Like the other Little books, this book is sure to broaden your horizons. And in fact, this one has the broadest horizons yet."--Matt Hellige, Researcher, Accenture Technology Labs

About the Author

Daniel P. Friedman is Professor of Computer Science in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University 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); and The Reasoned Schemer (with William E. Byrd, Oleg Kiselyov, and Jason Hemann).

Series: The MIT Press
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press; second edition edition (March 9, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0262535513
ISBN-13: 978-0262535519
Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.4 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 17 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #251,198 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #927 in Books > Textbooks > Computer Science > Programming Languages
- #1521 in Books > Computers & Technology > Computer Science
- #1526 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools

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Stephen Cagle

it is not as easy as that

December 2, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I gave this book 5 stars, but as this book is in a complete category of its own, that is kind of a technicality. The Reasoned Schemer is a book that introduces you to the notion, usage, and application of logic programming. It is entirely structured in a question/answer format, which slowly introduces you to all the base "control" structures you would need in logic programming.

Non logic programming basically works from the notion of imperative data flow. This is generally represented by the concept of a function. A function takes a argument and returns a value, it takes input variables and returns output variables. A logic program creates a relation (not a function) between a set of variables. If you had a two input function, with one output, you could represent this as a logic program relation of three variables. Two of those relation variables would be what were the two inputs to the function, the third variable would be the output of the function. Here is the kicker though. You can provide concrete values for any number of those variable in any order and ask the relation what the other variables might be. At the simplest level, this means that you might run your function "backwards" (from the output to the input). But really, it means that you can ask any question relating to those variables (conceptually). Now, realistically, it is not as easy as that. Some relations may never terminate (return a answer), some grow too large and barf (overflow), some may not complete for various other reasons. It can be more complex to actually write a logical relation than a function, this must be balanced against the fact that the relation is far more powerful than the function.

If you want a primer for logical programing, this book is probably worth your time. It takes you through writing many of the fundamental parts of a logical relation. The only thing I think it really skips is the actual unification (= x y) primitive itself, which I believe it uses as a given. You can learn quite a bit by reading this code slowly and carefully. Note however, that you must complete every step of the question/answer pairings! Skimming this book will not work (unless you already know it). Really, these concepts build on each other. It is a rather small (page number and physically) book, but it will take far more time to really go through then its size would suggest. Read and work through for the purpose of understanding, and I think you will really get a good backing in logic programming, and probably enjoy yourself as well!

Note: The above statements applied to the paper edition.

The Kindle version of this Book is pure garbage. Here I am, on a 2016 Macbook Pro with a Retina Display and I can barely read the damn thing. I tried reading on my Android, just awful. I tried on my Windows PC, same. A good deal of the information in this book is communicated by bolding and italics. These are incredibly difficult to see in the Kindle version. Shame on the publisher for releasing such an inferior thing to the public. Disappointed in Amazon for not enforcing minimum legibility standards on non free Kindle books. DO NOT EVEN CONSIDER BUYING THE KINDLE EDITION!

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Michael Vanier

fascinating and challenging

February 4, 2007

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

As the saying goes, if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like. The authors have extended the approach of their classic book _The Little Schemer_ to encompass what is usually called logic programming, but which they refer to as "relational programming" (a much better name, in my opinion). They extend the Scheme language with relational analogues of many constructs, notably lambda and cond (in many, many variations), and also provide extended versions of standard Scheme operations like cons, car, and cdr. Basically, the relational approach involves taking the result of a function call and making it just another argument, but a special argument that can get assigned to as the result of the computation. Big deal, so what? you ask. The important thing is that _all_ of the function arguments behave this way, so that you can specify the result of a function (relation) and ask the system to generate the arguments. For instance, instead of saying 2 + 2 = X and figuring out what X is, you can say X + 2 = 4 and the system will figure out what X has to be (in this case... ummm... oh yeah, 2). To do this, the system uses a mechanism called "backtracking" which systematically tries alternatives until it either finds the answer, gives up, or (if you didn't program the search right) goes on forever. If you haven't seen this style of programming before, this book will definitely open your eyes.

The relational/logic programming style is usually learned by studying the Prolog language, which is how I learned it (though I'm no expert). Having a knowledge of Prolog will definitely make this book easier to understand, although the approach given here is more modern than Prolog in several ways. For one thing, the named relations of Prolog are replaced here by anonymous relations (analogous to lambda expressions being anonymous functions), and for another, the (somewhat brutal) "cut" operator of Prolog, which is used to control backtracking, is ignored in favor of more subtle approaches involving interleaving solutions and giving up after single results are found.

I think the approach of learning-by-pattern-recognition that all the "Little X" books use is fairly effective here, though I think a lot of readers (meaning me) wouldn't mind a more extended discussion of the mechanics of the system.

All in all, if you liked _The Little Schemer_ and are curious about new ways of programming, you should definitely pick up a copy of this book. It will stretch your mind like a Slinky, and when you're done you'll have learned a new way of looking at programming.

30 people found this helpful

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Brian Beckman

Takes the Mystery Out of Logic Programming

February 6, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Careful and engaging walkthroughs of logic programming from bottom-up. No detail is missed, and you can implement your own system in any language from this description. Would have enjoyed seeing some non-academic scenarios like querying business data. Also, the Kindle edition is hard to read because the print is super tiny.

5 people found this helpful

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January 28, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Lost me on the first chapter. They need to make smaller logic leaps.

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Slobodan Blazeski

Interesthing ideas weird presentation

May 19, 2009

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I must say that I was expecting lesson on building logical system that this book completely lacks fallowed with examples of using it. But this book is only about using the Kanren logical system that authors designed. There is no ebook version that's completely inconvenient I was so frustrated with holding the dead tree and typing that I finally scanned the whole thing to keep my hands on the keyboard. The code in the book can't be just typed and tried but you have to apply substitution rules of the author weird symbols in your head. For example succeed is written as #s in the book but you should type succeed. Or run must actually take another argument like (run #f (q) while the author insists on writing (run (q). Neither pseudo code neither working scheme.
Nowhere in the preface does authors mentions that I should download the source code [...] , BTW the implementation code is excellent, and some supported implementation in order to actually run the programs.
When you add everything I wouldn't buy this book if I knew all this but on the other hand I'm not inclined to ask for a refund.

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Most recent customer reviews

Amazon Customer

Really good but not funny

Really good introduction to the topic.
No where near as funny as advertised.
To the point and hinting at complications without getting distracted.Read more

Published on October 26, 2015

Peter Krumins

Extremely fun to read and it will bend your mind.

This book takes you on the next adventure in the Schemer series. The Little Schemer taught lists and recursion, The Seasoned Schemer taught computation and now Reasoned Schemer...Read more

Published on July 9, 2015

Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA

Oh if more people read this…

Functional programming and programmed instruction is a great pair. If more programmers read this, the world would be spared much bad coding.

Published on May 13, 2014

Rick Evertsz

Great intro to functional and logic programming

I read the Little Lisper when it first came out. I was already a proficient Lisp programmer but really enjoyed the presentation. This time around, I'm about to learn core.Read more

Published on November 30, 2013

nanchen stanislas

Kindle Version not usable

As others have said (and I did not listen), the Kindle version of this book is quite unusable : all the content are pictures and it's not possible to zoom.Read more

Published on March 10, 2013

Norman Richards

Difficult to work through, but worth the time

The style of the the Reasoned Schemer is quite unique - at times refreshing yet at other times frustrating.Read more

Published on December 27, 2012

Hubert Iwaniuk

Reads like PDF

This electronic publication is useless.
Can't read a thing out of it. Most pages are images not text.
Zooming in doesn't help.Read more

Published on February 12, 2012

Brian

DO NOT purchase this in electronic form!

So. I read the Little Lisper a couple of years ago and enjoyed it. I finally got around to buying this book last night for my new Kindle. BIG mistake. It is unreadable.Read more

Published on May 4, 2011

Jon Loldrup

The idea is there, but the implementation is poor

First a word about The Reasoned Schemers soul-brother "The Little Schemer":
I read the Little Schemer from one end to the other, and I simply adored it.Read more

Published on March 19, 2010

Code Monkey

Good introduction if you like the style

Fans of the "Little Books" (The Little Schemer - 4th Edition,The Seasoned Schemer) will find an interesting introduction to logic programming here.Read more

Published on January 21, 2010

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