Product Description

Scheme is a general-purpose programming language, descended from Algol and Lisp, widely used in computing education and research and a broad range of industrial applications. This thoroughly updated edition of The Scheme Programming Language provides an introduction to Scheme and a definitive reference for standard Scheme, presented in a clear and concise manner. Written for professionals and students with some prior programming experience, it begins by leading the programmer gently through the basics of Scheme and continues with an introduction to some of the more advanced features of the language.

The fourth edition has been substantially revised and expanded to bring the content up to date with the current Scheme standard, the Revised⁶ Report on Scheme. All parts of the book were updated and three new chapters were added, covering the language's new library, exception handling, and record-definition features.

The book offers three chapters of introductory material with numerous examples, eight chapters of reference material, and one chapter of extended examples and additional exercises. All of the examples can be entered directly from the keyboard into an interactive Scheme session. Answers to many of the exercises, a complete formal syntax of Scheme, and a summary of forms and procedures are provided in appendixes.

The Scheme Programming Language is the only book available that serves both as an introductory text in a variety of courses and as an essential reference for Scheme programmers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #57520 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780262512985
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"Eric Raymond once wrote that learning Lisp makes one a better programmer for the rest of one's days. Scheme is the best dialect of Lisp to learn for this purpose, and Kent Dybvig's book provides a comprehensive and beautiful introduction to learning Scheme and becoming a better programmer."
—Olivier Danvy, Aarhus University, Denmark, co-Editor-in-Chief of Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation

"Kent Dybvig's The Scheme Programming Language is to Scheme what Kernighan and Ritchie's The C Programming Language is to C. Kent's book is the book for either the novice or serious Scheme programmer. Its style, wit, and organization has reached a new high with the publication of the fourth edition."
—Daniel P. Friedman, Department of Computer Science, Indiana University

"Students in my Programming Language Concepts class need to learn the basics of Scheme in a few days, and to pick up harder concepts throughout the course. For 19 years, The Scheme Programming Language has been an excellent guide for them. Dybvig's rapid-fire prose and examples serve both the Scheme beginner and the experienced programmer in need of a reference. Seldom do my students make a point of praising a computer science textbook; that happens over and over with this one."
—Claude W. Anderson, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

About the Author
R. Kent Dybvig is Professor of Computer Science at Indiana University and principal developer of Chez Scheme.

Customer Reviews

An excellent reference
This is an excellent book on Scheme, that covers R5RS thoroughly. The first part is a succint tutorial, most useful for those of us with no previous knowledge of functional programming: manipulation of lists, continuations, macros, etc. It is very clear, with plenty of solved examples and exercises. The second part is a thorough reference on every keyword and function of R5RS. There is nary a reference to particular implementations of Scheme, so it should be useful to everybody.

This is a dry book. I say this to its advantage. There are no extraneous comments nor attempts at being funny, yet the text is perfectly readable.

Typography is the truly standard TeX fare, and it looks very nice and 'functional'. Format is a bit wide, which helps the book to stay open where one leaves it open.

Many useful quasi-standard features outside R5RS (ie the SRFI's) are not covered. But for learning and practicing the language itself, I doubt there is a better choice. On the other hand, the full text of the book (and a handful of errata) is available online, should you not believe me (...)

A "must have" and a "must read". Excellent book.
As I said in a past review to the second edition, this book is wonderful. This book has convinced me to migrate from Common Lisp to Scheme. This is a serious book for the one that really wants to learn about Scheme and require careful study and a strong motivation. Please note: if you are really interested to learn Scheme, then this book is for you; if you are not really interested and/or you like to joke, this book is absolutely not for you. The book is accurate, complete, well written and cover all you need about the modern Scheme. I use Scheme for personal study about bioinformatics. Thanks to the Autor.

Good introduction but sometimes lacks clarity.
I purchased this book specifically with a view to learning the Scheme language. The text is easy to read, is pithy and to the point, and generally makes concepts clear and easy to understand. There are however, in my opinion, some sections where the author forgets that concepts are new to the reader and the examples that are used tend to obfuscate the point being made rather than elucidating it.

I have never considered myself stupid, but after my 5th reading of the introduction to continuations I was beginning to worry. A quick reading of another text on the subject cleared up my concerns almost immediately which suggests to me that the explanations are not as clear as they could be. There are some other areas of the book where this sort of assumption makes grasping a new concept more difficult than it should be.

Nonetheless, I still consider this a good introduction to the Scheme language and would gladly recommend it to the aspirant Schemer.