The Viamentis Blog

After finishing up most of Practical Common Lisp (except the practical chapters) I was looking at other options to sharpen my lisp fu. Then I bumped into Touretzky’s book. It’s simply awesome. If you’re looking at a step-by-step guide for starting off with Lisp, I would recommend you go for this instead of Peter Siebel’s.

But a look at PS’ book wouldn’t hurt either, because you would need the amazing Lispbox IDE that is recommended with Practical Common Lisp. After you finish this off, you can go back to PCL and you will gain more perspective. I should say I’m finally getting it: I can see why someone said “Coding in lisp is like crack. You feel it’s power once, you don’t even want to look at other langauges”.

Well, I certainly do want to look at others, but I’ve done six chapters of Touretzky, and I have to say I’m lovin it. the book is simply awesome. Maybe a bit too basic for smarter hackers, but I always liked the “teach, give some exercises, teach” approach better. I would have a good idea of how I’m progressing. Okay, see you after I finish the rest of the book. Bye!