Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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Subject: Re: Why do people like C? (Was: Comparison: Beta - Lisp)
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Date: Sat, 5 Nov 1994 19:53:24 +0000
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In article <o0yZuc1w165w@sytex.com> smcl@sytex.com "Scott McLoughlin" writes:

>         CL is a _big_ and complex language.  I'd think that 
> someone who wanted to learn how to use the language _well_
> would desire MORE and not LESS.  It'd be nice to have a big
> fat book just about optimization, maintainability, numerics

I agree. I don't think it's a good book to _start_ learning Lisp
with. Learn with a tutorial, and then move on to CLtL when you feel
you're reading for it. I remember reading in a review of Golden CL
that it came with a copy Winston and Horn and CLtL. Those are the
two Lisp books I started with, except that I started with the 1st
ed of W&H, and then moved to the 2nd ed, then read CLtL1, then
W&H 3rd ed, and finally, CLtL2. I have a few other Lisp tutorials,
also, but I can't recall at what point I got them.

>         A few years ago B. Stroustroup said something
> to the effect "If you cannot read 'The C Programming
> Language', you shouldn't program in C. Same goes for
> my book and C++." I'd say the same goes for Common
> Lisp and CLtL2. I personally don't care about freshman

I'd certainly recommend that any C programmer should read and
understand K&R, and if they can't cope, or if they think that
writing portable code wasn't relevant to them, then I'd hope
that I'd never have to look at or maintain their code!

While I feel than CLtL is an excellent reference book, I'm not
so sure it is a guide for _programming style_. In fact, I'm
certain that it isn't! It's a reference book for the language,
and doesn't offer what I'd call guidance. Steele's wonderful
verbose style (I mean the examples) help a lot, and I believe
in teaching by giving good (and if possible _excellent_) examples,
but what Steele mainly does is cover the language. If we were to
remove the text describing CL, then the book would make a poor
tutorial, and that's my point.

> CS majors learning Lisp/Scheme. There's lots of nice
> books for them readily available in any good bookstore.

I'm not sure that CS requires any specific language, but it
should at least be one that the reader is familiar with. If we
are discussing students, then that choice might be dictated
by other factors than the subject. I can't comment on that,
except to say that the CS stuff I've taught myself came from
books that don't use languages as popular as Lisp, unless the
popular use of Sparks and Mix are very well kept secrets.

> We do need more "industrial strength" books, not just
> "Welcome to Lisp", "Welcome to Language Semantics" and
> "AI Proof of Concept" literature that now fills the 
> shelves (these do tend to be nice books by the way).

Agreed! Just look at the kind of books for other languages,
or those that aren't language specific. One of my favourite
books on compiler theory uses Basic! Good grief, that's not
a language you expect to be used for CS, altho I don't see
why not.

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