Common Lisp Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach

You cannot be involved in the Lisp community without hearing about Dr. Edi Weitz; this man has a long list of accomplishments. His book does not disappoint either.He describes a problem and then analyzes various solutions to it in a no-nonsense, logical, easy to understand way.In each example you can tell he has tried the solutions he writes about, and has learned lessons along the way.In issues I had personally encountered, it was interesting to see him scrutinize the various programming choices, the problems with those choices and their outcome.Whether you are a beginner or experienced programmer this book is a valuable resource for solving many common Lisp programming problems.For the beginner this is a reference to have ready to address future issues you will most certainly encounter. For the experienced programmer, you can see many different approaches to problems you have already encountered, and see the flaws in your past choices, or to use as a reference for future issues.One thing I particularly enjoyed was how the author would discuss how one algorithm, while not wrong, might be received negatively by peers and why. This is especially good for those autonomous programmers who lack such feedback.5 year later update:I find myself going back to this book even years later to get a fresh perspective from a true expert on various programming issues. It is probably the most useful book I have on lisp. I highly recommend this book.

Edi Weitz has extreme credentials to write this book. The original author of hunchentoot and cl-ppcre, he knows the nitty gritty of the language.Edi is an engineer. And it shows in this book. Not only are the basic datatypes and datastructures of Lisp represented, but the stuff that a software professional needs to know about: concurrency, debugging, optimization, dates, times, calling C/Java/C++, dealing with JSON and XML, quicklisp, HTTP, GUIs, organizing projects with asdf, relational databases, hooking into the garbage collector, extending the reader, disassembly, and more.If you're ready to go beyond an academic approach to lisp (and are tired of reading meandering blog posts about it from people who never took the time to learn it), this book turn you into a full on Lisp software engineer.A word of caution, however. If you are new to Lisp, I would not suggest this book. It's not that you couldn't learn the language from it. You could. But it would take lots of discipline, and a lot of stuff is taken for granted. This is more for someone who already knows Lisp, but wants to round out what they already know with things they'll run into when using Lisp. If you are newer, the book recommends Practical Common Lisp. I'd second that recommendation.

I have known of Edi Weitz from the #lisp group and comp.lang.lisp for more than 10 years.He has written a great many of the most used public domain libraries for Lisp. It is a pleasure to see that he has taken the time to put down this experience in a book. This is not a book for beginners. it's a book for people that are already proficient in Lisp and want to enhance and perfect their form. It's a systematic walk through of the language illustrating techniques for using it by parts. As such it is more of a reference.For a beginners book 'Practical Common Lisp' by Peter Seibel is recommended. (Beginners who already know how to program.)

This book will definitely help any intermediate-level Lisper, but will also be useful for the advanced ones. Covering pretty much every aspect of Common Lisp in a series of practical recipes, this book helped me discover many areas of Common Lisp I've previously missed or was only aware of their existence. Besides teaching me a lot of very useful things and techniques, it boosted my confidence in Lisp programming. The book also serves as an excellent reference due to well-made index - so if you forget how to use a particular Lisp function or feature, you can quickly look up examples of using them in context.

Many programmers experienced in more popular languages come to Common Lisp and become confused and frustrated. Tasks they believe are simple are not obvious to newcomers in Common Lisp. Edmund Weitz's CL text is the perfect remedy. While Seibel's  Practical Common Lisp  is a good introduction to programming in the language, Weitz, like a mentor, takes you to the next level of solving common programming problems using one of the most powerful languages around. This book is one of the rare computing language texts that will retain its value for years to come.

This is a great book and a must have for programmers who want to increase their LISP skills. Unless you're a Peter Norvig or an Guy Steele I am certain that there is much to be gained from this book. For me, it was a wealth of information: I picked up a lot of subtle points and filled in a lot of gaps. I highly recommend this book!

A perfect companion piece to Peter Seibel's Practical Common Lisp, Weitz's Common Lisp Recipes is a really, really good examination of how to actually use the language, as well as a good examination of some of the more arcane corners of the language (e.g. I actually feel like I understand logical pathnames now). It's a joy to read, and despite programming in Lisp for over a decade I felt like I learned something in nearly every recipe.I can't recommend it highly enough.

If you are into lisp... know lisp... love lisp... you'll want this book. Don't try and learn lisp from this book... go to "Common LISP: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation" by Touretzky first. You have been warned.

"I don't know about you, but for me, discovering Common Lisp and learning to program in it was kind of a revelation" (Preface)Absolutely!I've owned this book for a week and it's already dog-eared and well-thumbed. I had planned to read it systematically, cover to cover, but I find myself jumping around and delighting in the wide range of content.It's been written with a lot of love, care and attention. The treatment of topics such as optimisation and error handling is solid advice, but there are more subtle pearls of wisdom in the footnotes, design choices and problem solving approaches.Lisp eschews fads and fashions, and being a programmable programming language, moves forwards with a quiet confidence that whatever future computing requirements demand, it can grow and adapt accordingly. This book brings us right up to date and leaves the reader in no doubt that a fifty plus year old language is still as relevant today as it ever was.Common Lisp Recipes has been eagerly anticipated and it's even better than many had dared hope. It's a substantial piece of work and it feels like a gift from the author to the Common Lisp community.It's essential reading for anybody with a grounding in Lisp. It's rekindled my flame, and I expect it to be by my side for many happy hours to come.

This is the Common Lisp book the community has been waiting for.

Eine Warnung vorab:Das Buch habe ich in beiden Fassungen erworben, sowohl jener in Buchform als auch jener in Ebook-Form. Zuerst hatte ich das Ebook, weil diese oftmals ausreichend sind, doch leider hat sich der Verlag nicht dazu durchringen können, die Darstellung der Quellcode als Schriften zu hinterlassen, sondern setzt diese als pixelige BILDER in das Buch hinein, die umso schlechter lesbar sind, je größer das verwendete Tablett ist. Das ist äußerst schade! Ich habe mich daher dazu durchgerungen, mir auch die Papierform zu kaufen, um eine vernünftige Qualität zu erhalten.Zum Inhalt:Das Buch ist, wie der Titel unschwer erkennen läßt, gleich einem Kochbuch, das Rezepte bereit hält, Rezepte um Problemlösungen der Programmierung in Common Lisp zu erfassen - und seinen Wissens- und Technikenhorizont zu erweitern. Der Autor setzt das Lesen von "Practical Common Lisp" als gegeben zu raus, da das Buch eben nicht die Anforderung hat oder erfüllt, ein Anfängerbuch zu sein. An gegebener Stelle gibt es daher immer wieder hinweise auf das andere Buch aus dem Apress Verlag und der Stelle, wo man sich zunächst noch einmal einlesen sollte, so einem die Materie wenig vertraut erscheint.Zu Beginn des Buches ist ein Inhaltsverzeichnis, das in seiner Art noch Verbesserung verdient. Hier ist das Buch Seibels besser, ist doch dort deutlich eine bessere Unterteilung in Kapitel und seine Unterkapitel (hier Rezepte) zu erkennen. Die Rezepte sind dann allesamt nach folgendem Schema aufgeteilt: Problem, Lösung, wie es funktioniert, was im Beispiel geschieht.Was mir am besten am Buch gefällt, ist seine Aktualität. Common Lisp wird hier nicht abstrahiert, sondern aus der heutigen Zeit genutzt. Quicklisp ist zum Beispiel bekannt und wird verwendet, ebenso häufige Bibliotheken des Alltags, wie z.B. Alexandria. Es zeigt wie man andere Sprache in Common Lisp aufruft, oder Common Lisp selber in andere Sprachen einbettet. Auch werden die Werkzeuge, genutzt, die man während der Programmierung mit Common Lisp verwendet, es bleibt weniger Abstrakt wie in anderen Werken.Das Buch ist eine klare Kaufempfehlung für all jene, die bereits in Common Lisp programmieren, und die einfach noch mehr darüber wissen möchten, lernen möchten, andere Techniken sehen möchten, für all jene, die KEINE Common Lisp Hacker a la Edi Weitz, Hans Hübner (dem technischen Revisor) oder Xach (dem Autor von Quicklisp) sind.

Why does anyone got the idea to write a book with programming tips for a now ~60 years old language?Quite simple: Because there is a demand.While there is a broad range of introducing books for the beginning lisp hacker it can be hard to see the advanced features that makes most of the incredible power of CL. This becomes even more harder when one has experience with "main-languages" because a lot of CL features does not exist in these languages and hence the importance is easily overseen.What one need in this situation is someone who shows how HE solve typical tasks, which libs to use and stuff like this. Someone who guide one to the right way to get deeper into development with lisp (believe me - you can get really wrong here . In my first year with CL i mechanically did "progamming C++ with CL". A really odd idea ;-).This is when this book comes in. In 22 chapters Dr. Weitz shows "CL at work" in a simple problem --> solution (and how it works) manner. This allows to read the whole book from start to end or to pick a dedicated problem and look for a "lispy" solution. Even randomly reading one of the recipes often present some surprising details that was overseen before or give a complete unexpected "lispy" solution.Within all this the author resists the temptation to get into (here) unneeded theoretical details or too advanced (but rarely seen) cases. He sticks with (more or less) every-day problems & pitfalls, making this book a must-have in a CL hackers bookshelf.

Consegna ed imballaggio perfetti come di solito con Amazon.Il libro è consigliato a lettori che conoscono già il Common Lisp e vogliono raggiungere un grado di conoscenza avanzato. La lettura è semplice ed il testo è ricco di esempi pratici. Un buon manuale da utilizzare come testo di riferimento anche a programmatori Common Lisp esperti. Eccellente!