Lisp in Small Pieces
#741 of 2,654 all-time
Lisp in Small Pieces
Christian Queinnec
9 people recommended it in 6 threads, 2011–2021.
What people on Hacker News said
An excellent and very fun read about compilation, interpretation, and programming semantics.
if you know any programming it would be enough to pick up the programs that are used as examples. Source code from the book is available and you will end up programming as you move along and it is a delight to see yourself make a program that can interpret another program.
I could add Queinnec's Lisp in small pieces (for the gradual derivation of fancier and fancier interpreters, the continuation one in CLOS was cool, and the bytecode part also very very cool)
This is a comprehensive account of the semantics and the implementation of the whole Lisp family of languages, namely Lisp, Scheme and related dialects. It describes 11 interpreters and 2 compilers, including very recent techniques of interpretation and compilation.
Where it comes up
- The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow 2017 · 3 recommendations
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- Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise? 2018 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: What's the best textbook you've read? 2018 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: What's the best programming book you've read recently? 2014 · 1 recommendation