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naleagdeco's review against another edition
4.0
OK so off the bat I did not do the exercises because I actually just wanted a primer on how Racket and Scheme compare to Common Lisp, I have other projects I want to finish first before coming back to that.
Anyway I am a super big fan of Conrad Baski's [b:Land of LISP: Learn to Program in LISP, One Game at a Time!|6905041|Land of LISP Learn to Program in LISP, One Game at a Time!|Conrad Barski|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403198191l/6905041._SX50_.jpg|7129234] and I had heard this is the Racket/Scheme equivalent of it.
I think this book does a good job at being that, in that:
1) It teaches you the basics of how Scheme is written
and
2) It teaches you some of the concepts that I think Scheme/Racket people focus on in program design
I am not qualified to talk about this book from the concept of a non-lisper or a non-programmer but I feel like if you don't know how lisp works and are a programmer this book will probably make sense to you.
I am a super big fan in general of books that use a series of games to teach concepts, because I find it more motivating than writing tools I may or may not have uses for. Probably the bigger thing is that by not being a consistent book-wide project I don't get bored if the example doesn't tickle me.
From a stylistic book I think the tone of the framing story is kind of sad and dumpy compared to the exhuberent joy and weirdness of Land of Lisp. I get people didn't want to rehash that, but I don't know, Scheme books are generally full of particular whimsy and joy that I don't know why this book had to be about a sad boy constantly needing help. Luckily this is only in the framing story, the text itself doesn't take on much affectation.
Anyway once I'm done a few project I was using this book as a stepping stool for I want to come back and see if I can truly comprehend some of the latter concepts that I'm personally not that used to, thunking and memoization and thinking about problems in game states. So in that sense the book did an excellent job stopping me from thinking of it as a primer and making me consider it in its own light.
Anyway I am a super big fan of Conrad Baski's [b:Land of LISP: Learn to Program in LISP, One Game at a Time!|6905041|Land of LISP Learn to Program in LISP, One Game at a Time!|Conrad Barski|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403198191l/6905041._SX50_.jpg|7129234] and I had heard this is the Racket/Scheme equivalent of it.
I think this book does a good job at being that, in that:
1) It teaches you the basics of how Scheme is written
and
2) It teaches you some of the concepts that I think Scheme/Racket people focus on in program design
I am not qualified to talk about this book from the concept of a non-lisper or a non-programmer but I feel like if you don't know how lisp works and are a programmer this book will probably make sense to you.
I am a super big fan in general of books that use a series of games to teach concepts, because I find it more motivating than writing tools I may or may not have uses for. Probably the bigger thing is that by not being a consistent book-wide project I don't get bored if the example doesn't tickle me.
From a stylistic book I think the tone of the framing story is kind of sad and dumpy compared to the exhuberent joy and weirdness of Land of Lisp. I get people didn't want to rehash that, but I don't know, Scheme books are generally full of particular whimsy and joy that I don't know why this book had to be about a sad boy constantly needing help. Luckily this is only in the framing story, the text itself doesn't take on much affectation.
Anyway once I'm done a few project I was using this book as a stepping stool for I want to come back and see if I can truly comprehend some of the latter concepts that I'm personally not that used to, thunking and memoization and thinking about problems in game states. So in that sense the book did an excellent job stopping me from thinking of it as a primer and making me consider it in its own light.
nickmay's review
informative
3.0
I'd love to use Lisp on a daily basis, except the libraries aren't there, so we all use Ruby and Python.
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