LISP

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1. _19qgOct 2024
   Generally I agree with what you are saying. I live outside the US and so this stuff from the end 70s / early 80s was very remote. Gladly we had then a well connected university where I got in contact with some of the more interesting stuff mid 80s.

   The book I found most useful in the early times as an introduction to Lisp and programming with it was LISP from Winston & Horn. The first edition was from 1981 and the second edition from 1984. I especially liked the third edition.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(book)

   Lisp on microcomputers in the early 80s was mostly not useful - that was my impression. I saw a Lisp for the Apple II, but that was very barebones. Next was Cambridge Lisp (a version of Standard Lisp) on the Atari ST. That was more complete but programming with it was a pain. Still, I found the idea of a very dynamic&expressive programming language and its interactive development style very interesting. The first useful implementations on smaller computers I saw were MacScheme and Coral Lisp, both for the Macintosh, Mid 80s...

   There were articles about Lisp in the Byte magazine early on, but having access to the software mentioned was difficult.

   The early use cases one heard of were: computer science education, functional programming, generally experimenting with new ideas of writing software, natural language processing, symbolic mathematics, ... This was nothing which would be more attractive to a wider audience. David Betz Xlisp later made Lisp more accessible. Which was then used in AutoCAD as an extension language: AutoLisp.

   Luckily I had starting mid 80s access at the university to the incoming stream of new research reports and there were reports about various Lisp related projects, theses, etc.

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2. ssrcMay 2023
   * This book, PAIP, by Peter Norvig

   * SICP, by Abelson and Sussman

   * Lisp (3rd ed), by Winston and Horn

   * The Art of Prolog, by Sterling and Shapiro

   It's like the same book written by different authors, and all of them are good.

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3. tjrMay 2023
   Might also consider Winston's other book more focused on AI (rather than Lisp):

   https://people.csail.mit.edu/phw/Books/index.html#AI

   https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.034f/ai3/rest.pdf

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4. galaxyLogicOct 2020
   "... Even though in Computer Science terms Lisp is an ancient language, few people to date figured out how to teach it well enough to make it accessible."

   Don't know why that is, to me Lisp came naturally reading Winston's book Lisp.

   I guess the thing is to just start playing with it, try out examples. Don't worry about meta-circularity until later, if ever. Don't read about it do it.

   And syntax even though it may look like a forest of parenthesis it is worth emphasizing that actually it makes the syntax extremely simple and universal since there are very few keywords if any.

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5. segmondyJul 2019
   RIP, my first intro to Winston was when I was a lad in high schools and got the LISP book that also goes by the name "Winston & Horn" Still an excellent LISP book.
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6. jonathanstrangeMar 2018
   Although I like HtDP as a scheme book, I have to say that its title has always been a bit misleading. It certainly doesn't teach you how to design programs, it is rather a good introduction to common scheme programming techniques.

   It teaches abstraction and techniques like streams and recursion. In that respect HtPD is very similar to Winston & Horn's Lisp.

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