Product Description

drawings by Duane Bibby

foreword by Gerald J. Sussman

The notion that "thinking about computing is one of the most exciting things the human mind can do" sets both The Little Schemer (formerly known as The Little LISPer) and its new companion volume, The Seasoned Schemer, apart from other books on LISP. The authors' enthusiasm for their subject is compelling as they present abstract concepts in a humorous and easy-to-grasp fashion. Together, these books will open new doors of thought to anyone who wants to find out what computing is really about.

The Little Schemer introduces computing as an extension of arithmetic and algebra -- things that everyone studies in grade school and high school. It introduces programs as recursive functions and briefly discusses the limits of what computers can do. The authors use the programming language Scheme, and interesting foods to illustrate these abstract ideas. The Seasoned Schemer informs the reader about additional dimensions of computing: functions as values, change of state, and exceptional cases.

The Little LISPer has been a popular introduction to LISP for many years. It had appeared in French and Japanese. The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer are worthy successors and will prove equally popular as textbooks for Scheme courses as well as companion texts for any complete introductory course in Computer Science.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30253 in Books
• Published on: 1995-12-21
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

Amazon.com
This delightful book leads you through the basic elements of programming in Scheme (a Lisp dialect) via a series of dialogues with well-chosen questions and exercises. Besides teaching Scheme, The Little Schemer teaches the reader how to think about computation. The authors focus on ten essential concepts of thinking about how to compute and demonstrate how to apply these concepts in inventive ways. The Little Schemer is an excellent book both for the beginner and for the seasoned programmer.

Review
"I learned more about LISP from this book than I have from any of the other LISP books I've read over the years. . . . While other books will tell you the mechanics of LISP, they can leave you largely uninformed on the style of problem-solving for which LISP is optimized. The Little LISPer teaches you how to think in the LISP language. . . an inexpensive, enjoyable introduction."
-- Gregg Williams, Byte

Book Info
Introduces computing as an extension of arithmetic and algebra. Also introduces programs as recursive functions and briefly discusses the limits of what computers can do. Paper. DLC: Scheme (Computer program language)

Customer Reviews

The poor Little Schemer
This poor exposé contains highly cryptic text from the outset. It makes the assumption that everyone understands the words used to program in Scheme.

The author appears not to give thought to the probability that each student has different levels or aspects of understanding, and forgets that nobody knows everything about any one thing. "Lambda", "cons", "car" and "cdr" are some of the many words that he uses and assumes everyone should understand

I highly recommend the book Programming & Meta-programming in Scheme to help explain the mathematics and vocabulary used in the Scheme language. I recommend this book especially to those that are perplexed by the text in The Little Schemer.

I could not finish this book.
Don't buy this book on recommendations. Thumb through it first. It's just a series of Q & A that beat you over the head with examples of recursion. If you already "get" recursion, it'll drive you insane after a chapter or two. Why this came so highly recommended, I'll never know.

Only Good as a Brain Puzzle
Anybody who tells you this is a good way to learn Scheme (or recursion) wants to cause you pain. Don't believe their lies!

Go learn the language (or how to use recursive techniques) somewhere else and come back to this once you have the basics if you want to get some practice thinking in the Scheme mindset.

In my opinion, a better way to practice would be to simply write some tools in Scheme than to waste your time banging your head against the wall trying to divine what this waste of paper is trying to teach you.