Successful Lisp: How to Understand and Use Common Lisp

http://www.psg.com/~dlamkins/sl/contents.html

by rbxbx • 16 years ago

63 7 16 years ago

lanolin2• 16 years ago

Would be useful if, in chapter 1, section "Lisp is a huge language", the author mentioned approx how many pages of CLtL is devoted specifically to the core of the Language. Comparison to the size of Scheme would be helpful as well (one regularly hears that the size of the entire Scheme R5RS spec is smaller than the index of the CL book).

mahmud3• 16 years ago

It takes 100 lines of bloated Common Lisp to do the same thing as 100 pages of tiny, elegant Scheme.

The standardized parts of Scheme are 45 pages. The parts of Scheme necessary to get work-done is the size of Common Lisp; without that pesky document from ANSI and ISO, and the support of 5+ vendors, or the large body of existent code that only comes with 30 years of cooperative work by a community with industry, government and academia.

I happily code in Scheme as well as Common Lisp; both languages have their places, and both need to be learned for the unique pleasure each has. Btw, Scheme SRFIs are some of the most enjoyable pieces of literature one has the fortune to read on Software Engineering.

lelele• 16 years ago

> I happily code in Scheme as well as Common Lisp; both languages have their places

What places? Common Lisp for production and Scheme for learning? Thanks.

namdnay• 16 years ago

"It's not quite true that no mass market product uses Lisp. Microsoft's "Bob" environment for naive computer users was developed (and delivered) in Lisp."

...

Successful Lisp: How to Understand and Use Common Lisp

Related Stories