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Land of Lisp (2010)

183 points| rg111 | 4 years ago |landoflisp.com | reply

86 comments

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[+] dang|4 years ago|reply
Some past related threads:

Land of Lisp (2010) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19677292 - April 2019 (80 comments)

The Land of Lisp - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15417735 - Oct 2017 (135 comments)

How Lisp is Going to Save the World - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5030803 - Jan 2013 (229 comments)

Land of Lisp - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481456 - Jan 2012 (7 comments)

Land of Lisp - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3013673 - Sept 2011 (6 comments)

Land of Lisp is finally out...and has a music video. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1836935 - Oct 2010 (108 comments)

[+] joe8756438|4 years ago|reply
This book is probably the most fun I have had with a programming book. I remember going through most of it the first day I cracked it open.

Curious if anyone knows other books that take a similar approach: fun but not dumbed down.

I tried a few from nostarch, in general I love their books, but i haven’t found one as engaging as land of lisp.

[+] rg111|4 years ago|reply
Not as fun, but there is a Rust book that teaches you Rust through teaching you to programming 2D games. It is called Hands-On Rust [0], and it is from PragPub.

When learning a language, I always look for books that actually make you do something rather than tediously, boringly walk you through the user-facing API.

[0]: https://pragprog.com/titles/hwrust/hands-on-rust/

[+] pfarrell|4 years ago|reply
“The Little Schemer”, by Daniel Friedman, takes a different tack, but, like LoL, is entertaining while teaching you the scheme language using the Socratic method.
[+] ignoreusernames|4 years ago|reply
Lisp is awesome, but I wish more places used regional pricing for online purchases. It's kinda crazy paying 40 dollars for an ebook since it's almost 1/5 of our minimum monthly wage (Brazil)
[+] grugagag|4 years ago|reply
When you can’t afford you can download pirated version and donate if you feel that the book gave you value.
[+] paines|4 years ago|reply
2021 was the 2nd year in a row that there was sales on Apress where they throw out great Lisp books for 6/7/8 Euro printed or digital. Subscribe to r/lisp or r/common_lisp and you will get the news.
[+] Chris2048|4 years ago|reply
Books like this sometimes feature in humble bundles.
[+] podiki|4 years ago|reply
It is a fun book to get started with (Common) Lisp! We need more fun, but instructive, books like this.
[+] ojl|4 years ago|reply
Yes, books introducing languages by implementing fun applications, like games in this case, usually helps me keep motivation and interest longer than other kinds of “Introduction to ..” books.
[+] Qem|4 years ago|reply
I wonder if Hylang can be used to work on this book, for someone approaching Lisp from a Python background, or the impedance mismatch between Hylang and CL is too high to allow that.
[+] FullyFunctional|4 years ago|reply
Funny, but the premise is insane: that Lisp is ful of things that are done better elsewhere and that Lisp is the weapon against bugs. I worked professionally in Lisp (Scheme) and this is 100% false. In my experience dynamically typed languages (incl. Lisp, Python, and Smalltalk) will absolutely be more bug prone than a good typed language (like Haskell or Rust) on non-trivial programs.
[+] nu11ptr|4 years ago|reply
I've always wanted to try Lisp but the fact that it is dynamically typed has always scared me away (and my experience with dynamically typed languages is the same - they are bug magnets). Rust is my go to and I don't think that will change any time soon.
[+] vindarel|4 years ago|reply
sorry that premise (and reality) is for Common Lisp ;)
[+] lbj|4 years ago|reply
I never understood why that video didn't make it onto MTV.
[+] 7thaccount|4 years ago|reply
I thought there was some interesting history in the book and certain common lisp implementations like SBCL are incredibly fast and powerful (some real secret alien technology there), but I thought that I could generally make shorter and clearer programs in just about any common scripting language (Python, Perl, PowerShell...etc). Granted, I know those languages better, but the book honestly didn't want to make me write Lisp. Homoiconicity is insanely powerful, but I find that specific syntax for certain things is easier for me to read and write up to a certain point.
[+] tomjakubowski|4 years ago|reply
The best part of Land of Lisp is learning to use SLIME. Except that learning it (and REPL-driven development) makes all other language/editor integrations seem inadequate! (one exception I know is CIDER for Clojure, also excellent)
[+] mbrodersen|4 years ago|reply
My reaction as well. The exaggerated claims of Lisp programs being bug free and non-Lisp programmers being slaves/prisoners/drones etc. doesn’t give me confidence in anything the author claims. I know it is supposed to be funny, and I do enjoy the humour, but I would prefer some real life stories about how complicated problems were fixed in Lisp better than what I could have been done in other languages. Lisp has cool features, but that doesn’t necessarily result in better software being developed in Lisp. Certainly looking around there doesn’t seem to be a lot of successful software written in Lisp. The world runs on other languages.
[+] nu11ptr|4 years ago|reply
Ha - that neat little music video is good marketing. I'm half tempted to try the book based on that. The only thing really stopping me is that I hate dynamically typed languages, but still I wonder if I shouldn't try Lisp just to "complete my education".
[+] civilized|4 years ago|reply
What was the point of that comic? That Lisp has no bugs?
[+] spicybright|4 years ago|reply
That the methodology of lisp coding leads to less bugs.

I'm not going to say that's true, but that's one of the points of the comic.

[+] behnamoh|4 years ago|reply
Somehow lisp reminds me of Android and Linux. Too much flexibility and openness makes for a fractioned ecosystem that is hard to adopt by the masses.
[+] GavinMcG|4 years ago|reply
This is a bizarre take. Android is the most-adopted mobile OS in the world.
[+] taeric|4 years ago|reply
Agreed with the sibling that this is an odd take.

As I often point out, though; I don't think we have any real insights as to what makes something that will be adopted by the masses. Outside of throwing effort at it.

Too many of us in the technical space get caught on the idea of throwing that effort at the solution and the problem. You can also throw effort at the actual adoption by the masses. That is, market outreach and general sales.