What do you think?
Rate this book
Successful Lisp: How to Understand and Use Common Lisp
This tutorial is written with the professional programmer in mind. Using a hands on approach it introduces the ANSI Common Lisp standard. Practical examples of working code provide an in depth view of Common Lisp programming paradigms. David B. Lamkins explains why this programming language is by far the most powerful industrial strength tool available for advanced software development.
360 pages, Paperback
First published December 8, 2004
1 person is currently reading
80 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 17, 2014
A good Lisp book.
It feels a bit more like a reference manual than a single story. The chapters are fairly self-contained and disconnected from each other. I wouldn't recommend this as an introductory book on Lisp (Land of Lisp and Practical Common Lisp are better for that), but once you've got the basics down this is a good tour of some of the stuff in CL you may not have found on your own.
There are bits that feel a little dated (e.g.: the Mac screenshots in the GUI chapter are from OS 9), but compared to most books on Lisp it's still quite fresh. And Common Lisp hasn't changed much in the past 20ish years anyway.
Overall: read some basic Lisp books first and then give this one a go.
It feels a bit more like a reference manual than a single story. The chapters are fairly self-contained and disconnected from each other. I wouldn't recommend this as an introductory book on Lisp (Land of Lisp and Practical Common Lisp are better for that), but once you've got the basics down this is a good tour of some of the stuff in CL you may not have found on your own.
There are bits that feel a little dated (e.g.: the Mac screenshots in the GUI chapter are from OS 9), but compared to most books on Lisp it's still quite fresh. And Common Lisp hasn't changed much in the past 20ish years anyway.
Overall: read some basic Lisp books first and then give this one a go.
February 27, 2013
I could have used this 8 years ago.
May 19, 2019
Reasonably accessible introduction to LISP. Alas, the well-considered tutorial code is not compatible with the ANSI standard. If you use this book's examples with, say, sbcl/SLIME, you must first (declaim (special *foo*)) for every variable *foo* used in the examples, or get hammered with warnings, your choice.
LISP has a weird and wonderful history. The emacs lisp tutorial (q.v.) explains some of the weird cruft for those unfortunate enough not to have been there. I was surprised by Successful Lisp's use of FIRST and REST. What's wrong with CAR and CDR? Who cares if they are derived from some old machine instructions? They are the spirit of LISP. No, that's not a "get off my lawn" gripe: It really helps to understand LISP if one simultaneously understands its history. "Split-p soup?"
"Compooters should work, people should think." -- Joseph Weizenbaum
"If you remember the 60s, you weren't there." --Wavy Gravy
LISP has a weird and wonderful history. The emacs lisp tutorial (q.v.) explains some of the weird cruft for those unfortunate enough not to have been there. I was surprised by Successful Lisp's use of FIRST and REST. What's wrong with CAR and CDR? Who cares if they are derived from some old machine instructions? They are the spirit of LISP. No, that's not a "get off my lawn" gripe: It really helps to understand LISP if one simultaneously understands its history. "Split-p soup?"
"Compooters should work, people should think." -- Joseph Weizenbaum
"If you remember the 60s, you weren't there." --Wavy Gravy
November 27, 2012
I am biased
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews