Reading A Programmer's Guide to COMMON LISP
I got a cheap used copy of the book A Programmer's Guide to COMMON LISP by Deborah G. Tatar, Digital Press, 1987.
Why did I read such an old book, published a few years after CLtL1 and well before ANSI finalized the Common Lisp standard?
I'm always looking for good Lisp books. Since Medley is my primary Lisp environment, I'm particularly interested in books published when the system was originally developed and used. These works are relevant because they cover a set of features close to the state of the Common Lisp implementation of Medley, and present a programming style typical of Lisp development in those years.
Two old reviews got me curious about A Programmer's Guide to COMMON LISP, one by Daniel Weinreb and the other by Richard Caruana.
Both reviews point out the book is different from most contemporary introductory Lisp books which focus on AI. Although Tatar's does contain some AI code, such as an interesting and complete toy expert system, the sample code spans a wider range of domains like a text formatter similar to nroff.
What sets A Programmer's Guide to COMMON LISP apart from other Lisp books is its environment independent discussion of the interactive Lisp programming process. Writing code in the editor, evaluating expressions from the editor, interacting with the REPL for testing expressions and exploring, and so on.
I've never seen the process expressed so clearly in any book, past of present. I'm familiar with it but the material is particulary helpful for complete beginners.
Although the short chapter on macros presents some interesting examples like a simplified version of defstruct, it doesn't discuss gensym and variable capture. This is unusual. But it's only one of a few issues and the book is a valuable addition to my Lisp library.
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