A book on algorithmic programming in Lisp

A book on algorithmic programming in Lisp(leanpub.com)

141 points by vseloved 6 years ago | 17 comments

agumonkey 6 years ago |

To the author:

- Numerous Thanks

- Found a typo in the acknowledgement section, you managed to misspell Robert Strandh's name :D

vseloved 6 years ago | |

thanks for the notice (my typing habit is such that I often don't press the keys hard enough which results in missing letters - easy to see thanks to the spellcheckers when a normal word is misspelled, not so hard for personal names though). Typo fixed

surroundingbox 6 years ago |

Hello, thanks for the book. It seems we'll have to learn RUTILS. Anyway in machine learning and other fields python and java have huge libraries. I think the algorithms part is the best since lisp libraries can't compete with other libraries like the more than 8000 packages for R. Don't know what happened to clasp (C++ Lisp), and other gnu scientific libraries, ffi. Other languages and libraries are moving fast (Nim, Julia, Cristal, Kotlin, Rust), but lisp macros are still strong. I would like to predict a bright future for Lisp but I don't see anyway it can compete with all the other options.

lassekliemann 6 years ago |

Thank you for this book!

Lisp is great. It's so much fun writing Lisp. Coding Lisp with Emacs/Slime is almost an enlightening experience.

However, I never quite got over the frustration that writing the same thing in C++ gives factor two, three or whatever speedup. There is not much that can be done about this, I'm afraid. It's a tragedy.

vseloved 6 years ago | |

It depends on what you code and how. I hope the book explains some of the approaches and describes the tools that can be used to reduce that difference and avoid a tragedy :)

TurboHaskal 6 years ago | | |

I would also recommend Edi Weitz's book "Common Lisp Recipes" for that. He offers great insights on how to improve performance.

traderjane 6 years ago |

Is there consensus on the most common and advisable tooling setup for newcomers in Common Lisp?

vseloved 6 years ago | |

There's a pretty good overview in this writeup (which is the most recent one): https://ambrevar.xyz/modern-common-lisp/index.html

_ph_ 6 years ago | |

Slime running on the Emacs of your choice would be a good start - as a Lisp implementation I would recommend SBCL, which is free and has an amazing compiler compiling to native code.

Alternatively, you could try the free version of Lispworks.

phoe-krk 6 years ago | |

https://portacle.github.io/

davidwf 6 years ago | |

Not consensus, but here's a counterpoint to all the folks implying "spend a year learning emacs". I made a failed run on "Practical Common Lisp" twice because I also tried to learn emacs at the same time, partially because of commment threads like this. I eventually went with Atom (my normal text editor) and atom-slime, and had a happy experience.

Maybe you would be shunned if you showed up at a professional CL shop for using such a setup, but if you are just wanting to try out CL for personal learning don't let emacs stop you.

peebz 6 years ago | |

If you don't want the additional learning curve of Emacs and Slime, the author recommends just using sbcl and rlwrap (which makes programming in a terminal nicer).

TurboHaskal 6 years ago | | |

Please don't. Half of the joy of hacking in Common Lisp is working with amazing environments such as Slime and the LispWorks IDE.

TurboHaskal 6 years ago | |

Spacemacs with the common-lisp layer sets you up.

NoahTheDuke 6 years ago |

This looks great. I read and learn best from paper. Do you have any plans for releasing physical copies? Maybe through Lulu?

vseloved 6 years ago | |

Yes, I plan to have a paperback version for $20+shipment. If you send me an email to vseloved@gmail.com I'll include you in the distribution (and send the details on how to pay and receive a copy in a week or two)

Torwald 6 years ago |

Judging from first scan, this book seems to be a very good book. Thanks for the link!