Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time! 1st Edition

by Conrad Barski (Author)

64 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-1593272814

ISBN-10: 1593272812

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Lisp has been hailed as the world’s most powerful programming language, but its cryptic syntax and academic reputation can be enough to scare off even experienced programmers. Those dark days are finally over—Land of Lisp brings the power of functional programming to the people!

With his brilliantly quirky comics and out-of-this-world games, longtime Lisper Conrad Barski teaches you the mysteries of Common Lisp. You’ll start with the basics, like list manipulation, I/O, and recursion, then move on to more complex topics like macros, higher order programming, and domain-specific languages. Then, when your brain overheats, you can kick back with an action-packed comic book interlude!

Along the way you’ll create (and play) games like Wizard Adventure, a text adventure with a whiskey-soaked twist, and Grand Theft Wumpus, the most violent version of Hunt the Wumpus the world has ever seen.

You'll learn to:
–Master the quirks of Lisp’s syntax and semantics
–Write concise and elegant functional programs
–Use macros, create domain-specific languages, and learn other advanced Lisp techniques
–Create your own web server, and use it to play browser-based games
–Put your Lisp skills to the test by writing brain-melting games like Dice of Doom and Orc Battle

With Land of Lisp, the power of functional programming is yours to wield.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Conrad Barski has an M.D. from the University of Miami, and nearly 20 years of programming experience. This includes a stint developing an obscure Atari Jaguar game, and working on many medical software projects. Barski is also an avid cartoonist, having created the popular alien Lisp mascot and many graphical tutorials. He currently develops cardiology software and lives in Washington, D.C.

Paperback: 504 pages
Publisher: No Starch Press; 1 edition (October 15, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1593272812
ISBN-13: 978-1593272814
Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 64 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #510,443 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #47 in Lisp Programming
- #303 in Game Programming
- #119 in Computer & Video Game Design

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Olwe Melwasul

Start your functional programming life here . . . if you dare. . . .

November 7, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is probably the exact opposite treatment of Lisp than "The Little Schemer" or "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs." While those books emphasize Scheme's (Scheme is a Lisp dialect) lack of "gnarl" (by omission). LofL seems to not worry about all the syntax weirdness of Common Lisp and just throw example (albeit great) after example at you. One problem I have with the example style is my nagging fears that I'm only getting a one-pass look at the language, and then am I really getting "best practices" learning? But of course one should simply grab the next Lisp book, for instance, Seibel's "Practical Common Lisp," then the Paul Graham books, then the Peter Norvig book "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming." then Hoyte's "Let Over Lambda," then probably go back and look at "SICP" to understand what Scheme is doing differently/better. Then you should probably look into an academic treatment of lambda calculus to really know why you're programming so differently from all the other boys and girls. Then study Haskell to understand what truly purely functional programming is really about. . . . Sigh, alas, functional programming seems both the future of computing, but a Sisyphusian quantum leap too. Yes, Grasshopper, the path to functional/lambda wisdom starts here, and first you must chop parentheses, and carry lambdas with Master Barski.

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Erik Toh

Excellent book!

November 21, 2010

Format: Paperback

Land of Lisp is an intermediate-level book that teaches Lisp by way of game programming. Interspersed with light-hearted illustrations, LoL is a real page-turner and is one of the most interesting programming books I've read. Important Lisp concepts such as macros, higher order functions and generic programming are clearly explained. One whole chapter is devoted to Lisp being applied to Domain Specific Languages, which is highly applicable and relevant to modern web programming. Along the way, the author also teaches fundamental concepts such as recursion (although not as much emphasis on this as compared to Scheme, for example), code reuse (the "Don't Repeat Yourself" principle), functional programming, closures, basic algorithms like MiniMax, depth-first search and a whole lot more.

Because the author assumes the reader has a basic grasp of his operating environment, setting up a Common Lisp implementation (editor/compiler) is not covered in detail. If that idea is too daunting for you, then you may wish to refer to the beginning chapters of Peter Seibel's Practical Common Lisp or David Lamkin's Successful Lisp as a starting point and come back to LoL when you're more comfortable with how things work.

All in all, I would say, "buy this book!". Highly recommended.

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Fogus

Eating parentheses for breakfast is delicious... and fun!

November 23, 2010

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

If for no other reason, you should buy Land of Lisp because of the extreme levels of unadulterated nerdery filling its pages. The price of the book is almost worth that very spectacle alone. However, as an added bonus the content of the book is top drawer. The first incarnation of Lisp was discovered by John McCarthy over 50 years ago, so it's difficult to imagine that a book on the subject bringing a fresh perspective, but Land of Lisp pulls it off in spades. The book manages to carve its own unique niche in the Lisp book landscape through a masterful blend of cartoons, game development examples, interesting prose, and a highly sharpened whit.

The author, Conrad Barski M.D., takes the reader through a whirlwind tour of Common Lisp and some of the fundamental principles of game development, but interestingly enough it never feels rushed. He accomplishes this feat by sticking to a very important strategy summarized as, "providing something useful at every stage". That is, every example in the book is meant to fit into the context of the larger game examples (e.g. a text adventure, Dice of Doom, etc.) while simultaneously teaching a lesson about Common Lisp *and* provide utility in isolation. It's really a thing of beauty the way that Mr. Barski manages to build useable games piecemeal while teaching important concepts along the way. To illustrate what I mean, let me give an example. The Dice of Doom game example starts with a very small 2x2 board and the program parts needed to represent it. Mr. Barski then builds pieces on top of this substrate to generate positions, while extolling the virtues of decoupling the logic of the game from its representation. It's at this point that the game is playable against a human opponent, but at no previous stage was the code left in a state of flux -- each one was fully amenable to tinkering, tweaking, and experimentation. As an added bonus, the whole implementation by this stage was an incredible 13 lines! (that is actually not true, it's more than that, but by using Common Lisp the implementation was incredibly concise) As if this feat was not impressive enough, Mr. Barski then adds game AI into the mix while explaining the famous minimax search algorithm. He then makes the game more efficient using some techniques common in functional programming, including: closures, memoization, tail-calls (with caveats), and lazy programming. As expected the game itself becomes more feature rich as these lessons progress as stronger AI (i.e. better evaluation) is added, more efficient search techniques are introduced (i.e. alpha-beta pruning), and heuristics are used.

All in all, I am very impressed with the quality of Land of Lisp. As a co-author of a Lisp programming book I appreciate the amount of effort required to pull off a genuinely unique book -- I would be happy to achieve a fraction of the quality of Land of Lisp. This book will appeal to the long-time Lisper and the neophyte and I highly recommend buying it today.

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Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time! 1st Edition