The Little Schemer
by Daniel P. Friedman, Matthias Felleisen · first published 1995
65% recommend31% neutral4% critical
Why HN recommends it
Short, question-and-answer primer that builds recursive thinking from scratch, with exercises doable on paper. Suits programmers new to Lisp or functional style, and pairs well with SICP.
Common criticism: Some find the childlike tone and slow, repetitive pace tedious
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The Little Schemer introduces computing as an extension of arithmetic and algebra ;things that everyone studies in grade school and high school. It introduces programs as recursive functions and briefly discusses the limits of what computers can do. The authors use the programming language Scheme, and interesting foods to illustrate these abstract ideas.
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What Hacker News says
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I really feel like they should teach LISP in elementary school. It has extremely simple rules to get started and helps people intuitively understand programming concepts. Maybe an updated The Little Schemer style curriculum: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/0...
on “Lisping at JPL (2002)” ↗I've found The Little Schemer[1] to be very approachable and effective for grokking common CS concepts. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Little-Schemer-4th-Edition/dp/0262...
on “Ask HN: Computer science for the self taught programmer” ↗…list, based off my own tastes. Maybe some of these are on the list, but I found it hard to scroll past a certain point as well: - Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets - The Nature of Computation - The Little Schemer - Programming Pearls
on “Reddit's favorite programming books, from 3.5B comments” ↗…interacting with highly technical ideas. The project in this book starts without the consent of management, which to me shows the value of questioning the system to add business / engineering value. 3. Little Schemer Small book that will give your brain a serious workout and show you how to problem solve with Lisp like languages. Even if you never end up using a Lisp dialect, this book expands your brain. I have…
on “Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?” ↗…yes, it does teach you to think in a new way. I am not kidding. You can see the plethora of (mostly free) books available at the website [0]. Learning J has given me "enlightenment" at the same level The Little Schemer has given me. (I don't recommend APL to anyone as you need to learn and painstakingly slowly insert those symbols. If you want to learn array thinking, go straight to J. Why waste time and headspace…
on “APL deserves its renaissance too (2018)” ↗…self-apply. ... To get deeper into the recursive mindset (if you're not there yet) and to build up deliberately to the Y combinator, take a look at one of my favorite books on functional programming, The Little Schemer [2]. (And watch out for the jelly stains!) ------ 0. And it's ill typed, but never mind that. It's not possible to define the Y combinator (or any other fixed-point combinator) in the simply typed-lambda…
on “Y combinator in Scheme” ↗…"Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent" by Harvey Silverglate Publisher: Encounter Books "JavaScript: The Good Parts" by Douglas Crockford Publisher: O'Reilly Media "The Little Schemer - 4th Edition" by Daniel P. Friedman Publisher: The MIT Press "The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It" by Michael E. Gerber Publisher: HarperCollins…
on “Top Books on Amazon Based on Links in Hacker News Comments” ↗Two good books which are in the sort of style you seek are: The Little Schemer <http://www.amazon.com/Little-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/02...; and Clause and Effect <http://www.amazon.com/Clause-Effect-Programming-Working-Prog.... Also a help is that the languages they…
on “Ask HN: Programming books that are more like math books?” ↗…I think it would still provide an easy-to-read gateway into the way programmers think and some interesting tidbits of history. Reading or watching Guy Steele's Growing a Language talk could be fun. The Little Schemer could be a good choice. Van der Linden's Expert C Programming covers some serious C topics, but is also generally educational and enjoyable. You could introduce them to Knuth's writings in an easily-digestible…
on “Ask HN: reading list for high school students interested in CS?” ↗Get a copy of this for the kids! http://www.amazon.com/The-Little-Schemer-4th-Edition/dp/0262...
on “Show HN: My current App Store Featured Game was written entirely in Scheme” ↗Another great exposition on the applicative-order Y combinator can be found at the end of Chapter 9 of The Little Schemer. It is interesting to contrast with how in Haskell, one can simply define Y as Y f = f (Y f) owing to the fact that it is lazily evaluated.
on “The Why of Y (2001) [pdf]” ↗…outline book. I like Schaum's Outline of Principles of Computer Science. Then all the "big hits": The Art of Computer Programming Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs The C Programming Language The Little Schemer, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, and Common Lisp the Language. Starting Forth, Thinking Forth, and the Forth-83 standard Smalltalk-80 the Language Programming in Prolog: Using the…
on “Ask HN: Advice for a prisoner learning to program” ↗…understand C.S. concepts that I should have learned better getting my degree. This is secretly a book about Lisp for people who are allergic to parenthesis. After reading this book, I was able to back to The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer and get a lot more out of them. All of the Stevens books, but probably UNIX Network Programming to start. I had the TCP/IP state diagram (from TCP/IP Illustrated) taped on my…
on “Ask HN: Which books do you consider real gems in your field of work/study?” ↗Here is my list. It is probably not a good hacker list, but a CS/ML/bioinformatics list. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP), Abelson & Sussman The Little Schemer, Friedman The C Programming Language (K&R), Kernighan & Ritchie The Analysis of Algorithms, Purdom & Brown The Elements of Statistical Learning, Hastie, Tibshirani, Friedman Biological Sequence Analysis,…
on “The Top 9½ Books In a Hacker's Bookshelf” ↗…C. (Chicken compiles Scheme to C.) Other people here strongly recommend PLT Scheme, though I haven't personally used it much. For learning functional programming in Lisp, I'd recommend starting with The Little Schemer. After that, The Seasoned Schemer and/or SICP. I would also consider Lua under those circumstances. Game programming is one of its strongest areas, and IMHO it is a very practical and well-designed language.…
on “Ask YC: Game programming in Lisp - is it possible?” ↗