Synopses & Reviews
There are surprises in store for the diligent reader of this masterful introduction to recursion as a fundamental tool for expressing and solving problems. With wit and wisdom, The Little LISPer unfolds some of the most beautiful concepts in mathematics, computer science, and logic.
The authors' goal is to show that recursive thinking is first of all fun, that it is powerful, and that the programming language Lisp allows one to express ideas recursively and naturally. There are hard problems along the way, but their solution brings mastery of recursive, functional, and meta-linguistic abstractions, developing skills in the underlying creative programming in Lisp. The Little LISPer is self-contained: an interpreter for the language is developed using the tools of the book itself .
Review
"This is a wonderful extension of an already lovely book. Dan Friedman and Matthias Felleisen are in love with recursive thinking, and with Lisp as a vehicle for explaining it.... The authors carry total novices from childish 'toys' all the way to extremely abstract concepts deep in the heart of logic and computation. And yet from beginning to end, it's done with humor and obvious, infectious joy ... by no means just another guide to programming tricks and tools ... it is a rich, spicy, deep dish. If it were a pizza I would love eating it!"
- Douglas Hofstadter, author of Gödel, Escher, Bach
Review
"Many readers will be delighted and edified by Friedman and Felleisen's novel approach to the recursive programming language Lisp."
- Raymond Smullyan, author of To Mock a Mockingbird
Synopsis
The authors' goal is to show that recursive thinking is first of all fun, that it is powerful, and that the programming language Lisp allows one to express ideas recursively and naturally. There are hard problems along the way, but their solution brings mastery of recursive, functional, and meta-linguistic abstractions, developing skills in the underlying creative programming in Lisp. The Little LISPer is self-contained: an interpreter for the language is developed using the tools of the book itself .
Synopsis
There are surprises in store for the diligent reader of this masterful introduction to recursion as a fundamental tool for expressing and solving problems. With wit and wisdom, The Little LISPer unfolds some of the most beautiful concepts in mathematics, computer science, and logic.
About the Author
Daniel P. Friedman is Professor of Computer Science at Indiana University and is the author of many books published by the MIT Press, including The Little Schemer (fourth edition, 1995), The Seasoned Schemer (1995), A Little Java, A Few Patterns (1997), each of these coauthored with Matthias Felleisen, and The Reasoned Schemer (2005), coauthored with William E. Byrd and Oleg Kiselyov.Matthias Felleisen is Trustee Professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University, recipient of the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award, and co-author (with Daniel Friedman) of The Little Schemer and three other "Little" books published by the MIT Press.