 |
GetTextbooks.co.uk
Compare Prices & Save up to 90% |
|
|
|
| Login | Sign up | My Wish List |
 | | Object-Oriented Common LISP by Stephen Slade ISBN-10: 9780136059400 ISBN-10: 0-13-605940-6 ISBN-13: 9780136059400 ISBN-13: 978-0-13-605940-0 Paperback 1997-08-09 Prentice Hall PTR Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description LISP, which stands for LISt Processing, was developed in the late 1950s by John McCarthy as a language for manipulating symbols. This book presents the Common LISP Language, a version of LISP, and details a range of applications for it, including data structures, computer systems, and compiler design.This book presents a tutorial introduction to Common LISP, coverign lists and trees, recursion, local vs. global reference, characters and strings, streams, LAMDA and LABELS, control, debugging, macros, structures, classes and objects, vectors and arrays, and efficiency and compilation.For programmers interested in a language with simple syntax, extensive adaptability and advanced memory management. | ||
Reviews | ||
Disappointing I'd bought a copy of Keene, because I'd heard it was good, but ended up being a bit disappointed with it. So when I saw Slade's book, I wondered if this was the CLOS book I'd been looking for. Short answer: no, it's worse. It's not even clear what the book is trying to teach: programming, or Lisp, or object-oriented programming, or CLOS. He seems to be trying to do all of the above, but due to the huge scope, being unable to go deep into anything. He starts chapters with irrelevant quotes, which works if you're Knuth, but he's no Knuth. He jumps around a lot, and the order is bizarre: several important concepts are held off until relatively late. Other big concepts are mentioned only in passing, which an experienced Lisper will understand, but then, if you already know what he means, why would you read this book? No surprise that I'd not heard of this book: in a field of classics, there's just no point. If you want to learn programming, read SICP. If you want to learn Common Lisp (with lots of sample code), read PCL, or PAIP. If you want to learn CLOS, read AMOP; if that's too rough, get Keene. The back cover mentions "classroom experience", so perhaps it's written to accompany a course taught by Slade. If you had a couple hours of lecture to flush out the details of each section, it might be passable. If you're reading it as a standalone book, it leaves much to be desired. Finally, the back cover advertises that this book "introduces advanced concepts such as LAMDA". Yes, it misspells one of the basic Lisp symbols right on the cover. That's all you really need to know about this book. Stick with the classics. | ||
Not a bad introduction for the beginner, but very poorly titled. The book has one chapter on CLOS, the Common Lisp Object System, pretty much the same as any other Lisp tutorial. As such, the title is very misleading, and the reader expecting an in-depth treatment of object-oriented programming in Common Lisp will be very disappointed. This book isn't bad, but Peter Seibel's excellent Practical Common Lisp is better in pretty much every respect. If you still want a dedicated book on CLOS, Sonya Keene's "Object Oriented Programming in Common Lisp" is a much better tutorial, and Kiczales' "The Art of the Metaobject Protocol" is a wonderful treatment of the CLOS internals, though not for the faint of heart. | ||
Lucky for me I checked out this book... While taking a course in AI, I was recommended by the professor to buy the Winston and Horn book which I did. However, lucky for me, I had checked out Dr. Slade's book from the library. Everytime a programming project came around, if I needed to figure out how to do something, I always turned to Object-Oriented Common Lisp. Why? Because if I couldn't figure out how to do something from Winston and Horn, I usually found it in this book (not that Winston and Horn is a bad book, just this book seems much better). If you need to know how to get something done in Lisp, I think this is the book for you. If you want to be an AI snob well then get the other book. | ||
Very good beginner's tutorial This is a great introduction to Common Lisp for those who are looking for a complete, tutorial-style text book with lots of examples. This is the most under-appreciated Lisp book I know of. This is not the end of the journey, of course. Graham's books make a good follow-up. | ||
The natural companion to Steele's Common Lisp, the language Lisp provides an incredible amount of programming concepts. All the concepts are described in Steele's monumental "Common Lisp, the language" or the newer hypertext version on the web. The one gripe I have with Steele's book is that it lacks examples. Sthepen Slade provides all the examples of common usage that Steel might have provided. | ||