Re: Help with Learning Programming and LISP

[Zelphir Kaltstahl <zelphirkaltstahl@posteo.de>]

I would like to add "The Little Schemer" to the list of good books
suggested here. Damn did I get a lot out of that little book. It starts
at the very beginning, but accelerates quickly.

I would say I got more out of SICP than The Little Schemer, but both are
phenomenal books in my opinion. SICP has many many pages and covers many
topics. More than are treated in The Little Schemer, but the content in
The Little Schemer is very enlightening as well, just like many things
in SICP were for me. In The Little Schemer I read multiple chapters
multiple times to get a better understanding and often was rewarded by
understanding it better and even better, when I later typed that code
into my machine and wrote comments for everything. I am far from
finished with SICP, but I had a lot of "Aha!" moments with it too. Both
highly recommended books, but they might take also some time to get
through, if you have a job and not much time to spend on the books.

Haven't read Practical Common Lisp.

Realm of Racket was a little disappointing for me personally, as in my
version there was some code missing and thus some example did not work
(the procedure `decay` is missing in my book). I also did not buy in to
the "Big bang" thingy that much. I would have preferred to write
something on top of a minimalistic 2D engine instead. In general is it a
nice idea though, to get content across by writing small games.

I still have PAIP (Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming)
here and am not sure how to sort it in. So far it has been good content,
but I also have not progressed very far into it yet. I am rewriting the
code in Scheme so far, when I try out the code of it.