The Little Schemer - 4th Edition fourth edition Edition

by Daniel P. Friedman (Author), Matthias Felleisen (Author), Duane Bibby (Drawings),

66 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0262560993

ISBN-10: 0262560992

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The notion that "thinking about computing is one of the most exciting things the human mind can do" sets both The Little Schemer (formerly known as The Little LISPer) and its new companion volume, The Seasoned Schemer, apart from other books on LISP. The authors' enthusiasm for their subject is compelling as they present abstract concepts in a humorous and easy-to-grasp fashion. Together, these books will open new doors of thought to anyone who wants to find out what computing is really about. The Little Schemer introduces computing as an extension of arithmetic and algebra; things that everyone studies in grade school and high school. It introduces programs as recursive functions and briefly discusses the limits of what computers can do. The authors use the programming language Scheme, and interesting foods to illustrate these abstract ideas. The Seasoned Schemer informs the reader about additional dimensions of computing: functions as values, change of state, and exceptional cases. The Little LISPer has been a popular introduction to LISP for many years. It had appeared in French and Japanese. The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer are worthy successors and will prove equally popular as textbooks for Scheme courses as well as companion texts for any complete introductory course in Computer Science.

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Editorial Reviews

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This delightful book leads you through the basic elements of programming in Scheme (a Lisp dialect) via a series of dialogues with well-chosen questions and exercises. Besides teaching Scheme, The Little Schemer teaches the reader how to think about computation. The authors focus on ten essential concepts of thinking about how to compute and demonstrate how to apply these concepts in inventive ways. The Little Schemer is an excellent book both for the beginner and for the seasoned programmer.

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I learned more about LISP from this book than I have from any of the other LISP books I've read over the years...While other books will tell you the mechanics of LISP, they can leave you largely uninformed on the style of problem-solving for which LISP is optimized. The Little LISPer teaches you how to think in the LISP language...an inexpensive, enjoyable introduction.

―Gregg Williams, Byte

―Gregg Williams, Byte (Reviews)

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Product details

Series: The MIT Press
Paperback: 216 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press; fourth edition edition (December 21, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0262560992
ISBN-13: 978-0262560993
Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 0.6 x 8.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 66 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #98,655 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > Lisp
- #430 in Books > Textbooks > Computer Science > Programming Languages
- #621 in Books > Computers & Technology > Software

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Jonathan Aquino

Has the feel of a game

January 3, 2008

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This book consists of dozens of exercises that you solve using little snippets of recursive code. It definitely has the feel of a game - Sudoku moreso than Call of Duty.

The key to enjoying this book is to not get hung up on the non-code questions. The book is written as a list of questions and answers, and it's frustrating to try to answer the non-code questions because they are often unguessable:

Q: Is that bad?
A: You must beware of shadows

Quickly read through the non-code questions and answers. But try to answer the code questions - that's the stuff that's fun and interesting.

Q: Write fun? with set? and firsts
A: (define fun? (lambda (rel) (set? (firsts rel))))

You'll find pencil and paper to be too slow for this stuff; a text editor is more convenient. But you need not bother running the code through a compiler - the answers are given on the same page.

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Michael Vanier

charming and delightful but also massively mind-stretching

February 20, 2001

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is a wonderful book for people who enjoy having their minds stretched. It starts from the most elementary concepts (this is a number, this is a symbol) and then proceeds to teach you how to program in scheme (a lisp dialect) using a question-and-answer approach, with the questions on the left hand side of the page and the answers on the right. Most of the teaching is by example; the authors show you something several times in several different guises in order to get you to understand the pattern underlying the programming examples. This form of teaching-by-pattern-recognition is especially useful for scheme, because lisp-based languages represent such a different paradigm from more conventional computer languages that it really helps to have the pattern in mind when you want to write a new function. The authors show how the basic elements of lisp (atoms, numbers and lists) can be used to solve an amazing variety of problems, many of which would be much harder (or impossible) in more conventional computer languages. Most of the book is so easy that a complete novice who had never programmed before could understand it, but the authors sneakily keep increasing the complexity until in the last three chapters they cover continuation-passing style, the applicative-order Y combinator (!) and writing a scheme interpreter in scheme (!!). Some of these topics would go over the head of most computer science Ph.D.'s (go ahead, ask one what the Y combinator is -- I dare you!). This is not the book to read if you're looking for a "teach yourself visual basic in 20 minutes" kind of book, but if you like programming and you enjoy having your mind stretched, you could not do better than this book (or its companion book, the Seasoned Schemer).

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Justin Hamilton

One of the best computer science books around

June 7, 2011

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Little Schemer is without a doubt one of the best books I have ever read on the subject of recursion, and what is interesting because they never really go into a formal definition of what recursion is, as most texts on computer science try to. Instead they show the reader time and time again what recursion is, while providing a great series of rules (commandments) on how to get the most out of recursion, particually in a tail-recursive language like Scheme.

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.

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Most recent customer reviews

Cody Wu

unusual way of organizing an introductory book

the way the book was written might alienate quite a few people which largely explains the two extremes of the reviews so far.Read more

Published 3 months ago

hannibal

The book itself does not look bad. I love all these cutest elephants

The book itself does not look bad. I love all these cutest elephants. The problem is the content SUCKS.Read more

Published 7 months ago

davido

People who like it seem to really like it

I've read a hundred computer programming books over the years. Some stand out as excellently written. Other stand out as really awful. This book is neither.Read more

Published 11 months ago

Not bad for learning if you read page by page but a nightmare for referencing anything specific.

Published 1 year ago

Amazon Customer

Not worth the cost

I absolutely loved the fist half or so of this book: it's one of the best introductions to the type of thought patterns you need to deal effectively with recursion and functional...Read more

Published 1 year ago

Lana

a lot easier

I was new to programming but this book's absolutely delightful - makes learning a lot easier

Published 1 year ago

Anoop J. Menon

Brain teasing, captivating and captures the essence of "thinking about computing".

Brain teasing, captivating and captures the essence of "thinking about computing". A programming book for anyone wanting to learn the finer arts of programming - brick by...Read more

Published on May 16, 2016

Carlos

First 80 pages are great, second 40 are confusing, last 50 attrocious

The first 80 pages of this book is spectacular. The instructions are clear. It walks you through the recursion step by step until you grasped all the essentials.Read more

Published on April 18, 2016

Tebow

Classic

This is a great book that teaches functional programming and the basics of scheme in a novel, fun and interesting way.

Published on January 16, 2016

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