The seasoned schemer
by Daniel P. Friedman · first published 1995
70% recommend26% neutral4% critical
Why HN recommends it
Sequel to The Little Schemer that builds functional-programming skill through exercises; seems easy but teaches ideas some CS grad students lack. Suits people who know some Lisp and want to go deeper before SICP.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…Little Lisper. It also happens to be much cheaper: http://www.amazon.com/Little-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/02... It's an excellent introduction to thinking recursively. The others in the series (The Seasoned Schemer, The Reasoned Schemer) are worth reading too.
on “Programming books I have read and somewhat liked” ↗I'm looking forward to fogus's BOF summary. Dan Friedman (author of The Little Schemer, The Seasoned Schemer, The Reasoned Schemer, and many other excellent books and papers) and William Byrd were in attendance. They gave a pretty stunning presentation on miniKanren.
on “Clojure/core — (second conj)” ↗Might I make a recommendation? Start with "The Little Schemer" and then graduate to "The Seasoned Schemer". Here: http://www.amazon.com/Little-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/02... It takes you more step-by-step than SICP and once you get more practice with those books, SICP will be much more paletable.
on “Ask HN: Anyone want to work through SICP together?” ↗Essentials of Programming Languages (EOPL) http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Programming-Languages-Danie... and The Seasoned Schemer as well http://www.amazon.com/Seasoned-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/...
on “The Development of Chez Scheme [pdf]” ↗…options out there. The canonical text everyone will give you is "Structure and interpretation of computer programs". I am a big fan of the little family of books by Friedman et al. - Little schemer - Seasoned schemer Are a good start. There is also Practical common lisp which and land of lisp which are usually recommended by people. Hope that helps somewhat.
on “Why Emacs: Redux” ↗…probably the only person that did not like EOPL. I bought the 3rd edition, went back to the 2nd edition, and at some point early on the eval did not work. Which is a shame since I enjoyed Friedman's Little/Seasoned Schemer and Scheme and the Art of Programming
on “Contents • Build Your Own Lisp” ↗…you have any additional recommendations I'd appreciate it. I really enjoyed Friedman's book `Scheme and the Art of Programming` because it filled in some pieces missing from "The Little Schemer" (and "Seasoned Schemer"). Building stuff like `kons`, `map` and all that `letrec` stuff. But the big difference between Scheme and Clojure is that in Scheme, while it's "functional by concept," you get to escape with `(set!…
on “Purely Functional Data Structure by Chris Okasaki [pdf]” ↗…forward and preface to SICP is good reading. https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/b... The Dan Friedman books are pretty good in general: "The Little Schemer," and the sequel "The Seasoned Schemer" which are both more "recursion" books. He also has another book "Scheme and the Art of Programming." Which I think is a great comp sci book that's not too difficult and doesn't seem too well known.…
on “A Lisp adventure on the calm waters of the dead C (2021)” ↗…"3G" cellular technology would be unworkable without big antenna arrays [4] A lot of the "classic" books on Lisp and related topics were written during this period. SICP, PAIP, and On Lisp, and The Seasoned Schemer come to mind.
on “Why Lisp Is Unpopular” ↗…explanation of first-order evaluation that scheme uses. Once you know how scheme evals sexps, it makes sense that quote skips some of the steps of evaluation. I strongly recommend the SICP/Little Schemer/Seasoned Schemer if you haven't heard of them.
on “PLT Scheme is a Racket” ↗There are plenty of Lisp books that are just as good or better imo: The Little Schemer The Seasoned Schemer SICP Lisp In Small Pieces Practical Common Lisp
on “Full-disclosure – Administrivia: The End” ↗…I did. It echoes a lot of the thoughts mentioned already: To learn "lispiness", functional programming, and get a feel for the computational approach to programming, read The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer. Also watch the SICP lectures (http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-le...) and if you're ambitions, read the book (http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/). Doing these things will help keep…
on “Ask YC: I started learning Lisp and I'm looking for some advice.” ↗…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. (Lua and Scheme are, by far,…
on “Ask YC: Game programming in Lisp - is it possible?” ↗…recursion and continuations. The book referenced in the article is The Schemer's Guide: http://www.schemers.com/tsg.html Two other good learning books for children are probably The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer. Racket is an easy, free, open source environment to get started in: http://racket-lang.org or install the package 'plt-scheme' from whatever Linux distro you're using.
on “Ask HN: What programming languages to teach kids under 12 years old?” ↗…standardized CS test for to-be graduates (MFAT I believe it's called) and scored in the highest bracket >95%. I read, comprehended, and loved GEB. I read, mostly comprehended, and loved SICP and The [Little, Seasoned] Schemer. I had to give up on a book about Gödel's incompleteness theorems because I couldn't hang with the math. I did the Grepling challenge a while back in Python without cheating. I've learned how to learn…
on “Eliminate the Computer Science major” ↗