Land of Lisp

Land of Lisp

A fun and lighthearted guide to the Lisp programming language, filled with working game code and original cartoons.
- An original, fun, and hands-on approach to learning Lisp
- Author is well-known and highly regarded within the Lisp community
- Lisp is enjoying a resurgence in popularity

Lisp is a uniquely powerful programming language that, despite its academic reputation, is actually very practical. Land of Lisp brings the language into the real world, teaching readers Lisp by showing them how to write several complete Lisp-based games, including a text adventure, an evolution simulation, and a robot battle. While building these games, readers learn the core concepts of Lisp programming, such as recursion, input/output, object-oriented programming, and macros. And thanks to Lisp's powerful syntax, the example code is short and easy to understand. The book is filled with the author's brilliant Lisp cartoons, which are sure to appeal to many Lisp fans and, in the tradition of all No Starch Press titles, make learning more fun.

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Conrad Barski has an M.D. from the University of Miami, and nearly 20 years of programming experience. This includes a stint developing an obscure Atari Jaguar game, and working on many medical software projects. Barski is also an avid cartoonist, having created the popular alien Lisp mascot and many graphical tutorials. He currently develops cardiology software and lives in Washington, D.C.

Inhaltsangabe

Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction
What Makes Lisp So Cool and Unusual?
If Lisp Is So Great, Why Don't More People Use It?
Where Did Lisp Come From?
Where Does Lisp Get Its Power?
Lisp is Power
Chapter 1: Getting Started with Lisp
1.1 Lisp Dialects
1.2 Getting Started with CLISP
1.3 What You've Learned
Chapter 2: Creating Your First Lisp Program
2.1 The Guess-My-Number Game
2.2 Defining Global Variables in Lisp
2.3 Basic Lisp Etiquette
2.4 Defining Global Functions in Lisp
2.5 Defining Local Variables in Lisp
2.6 Defining Local Functions in Lisp
2.7 What You've Learned
Chapter 3: Exploring the Syntax of Lisp Code
3.1 Syntax and Semantics
3.2 The Building Blocks of Lisp Syntax
3.3 How Lisp Distinguishes Between Code and Data
3.4 Lists in Lisp
3.5 What You've Learned
Lisp is Symmetry
Chapter 4: Making Decisions with Conditions
4.1 The Symmetry of nil and ()
4.2 The Conditionals: if and Beyond
4.3 Cool Tricks with Conditions
4.4 Comparing Stuff: eq, equal, and More
4.5 What You've Learned
Chapter 5: Building a Text Game Engine
5.1 The Wizard's Adventure Game
5.2 Describing the Scenery with an Association List
5.3 Describing the Location
5.4 Describing the Paths
5.5 Describing Objects at a Specific Location
5.6 Describing It All
5.7 Walking Around in Our World
5.8 Picking Up Objects
5.9 Checking Our Inventory
5.10 What You've Learned
Chapter 6: Interacting with the World: Reading and Printing in Lisp
6.1 Printing and Reading Text
6.2 The Symmetry Between Code and Data in Lisp
6.3 Adding a Custom Interface to Our Game Engine
6.4 Trying Out Our Fancy New Game Interface
6.5 The Dangers of read and eval
6.6 What You've Learned
Chapter 6.5: lambda: A Function So Important It Deserves Its Own Chapter
7.1 What lambda Does
7.2 Why lambda Is So Important
7.3 What You've Learned
Chapter 7: Going Beyond Basic Lists
8.1 Exotic Lists
8.2 Coping with Complicated Data
8.3 Creating a Graph
8.4 Creating Undirected Graphs
8.5 What You've Learned
Chapter 8: This Ain't Your Daddy's Wumpus
9.1 The Grand Theft Wumpus Game
9.2 Defining the Edges of Congestion City
9.3 Building the Nodes for Congestion City
9.4 Initializing a New Game of Grand Theft Wumpus
9.5 Drawing a Map of Our City
9.6 Let's Hunt Some Wumpus!
9.7 What You've Learned
Chapter 9: Advanced Datatypes and Generic Programming
10.1 Arrays
10.2 Hash Tables
10.3 Common Lisp Structures
10.4 Handling Data in a Generic Way
10.5 The Orc Battle Game
10.6 What You've Learned
Lisp is Hacking
Chapter 10: Looping with the loop Command
11.1 The loop Macro
11.2 Using loop to Evolve!
11.3 What You've Learned
Chapter 11: Printing Text with the format Function
12.1 Anatomy of the format Function
12.2 Control Sequences for Printing Lisp Values
12.3 Control Sequences for Formatting Numbers
12.4 Printing Multiple Lines of Output
12.5 Justifying Output
12.6 Iterating Through Lists Using Control Sequences
12.7 A Crazy Formatting Trick for Creating Pretty Tables of Data
12.8 Attack of the Robots!
12.9 What You've Learned
Chapter 12: Working with Streams
13.1 Types of Streams
13.2 Working with Files
13.3 Working with Sockets
13.4 String Streams: The Oddball Type
13.5 What You've Learned
Chapter 13: Let's Create a Web Server!
14.1 Error Handling in Common Lisp
14.2 Writing a Web Server from Scratch
14.3 Building a Dynamic Website
14.4 What You've Learned
Chapter 13.5: Functional Programming Is Beautiful
Lisp is Science
Chapter 14: Ramping Lisp Up a Notch with Functional Programming
16.1 What Is Functional Programming?
16.2 Anatomy of a Program Written in the Functional Style
16.3 Higher-Order Programming
16.4 Why Functional Programming Is Crazy
16.5 Why Functional Programming Is Fantastic
16.6 What You've Learned
Chapter 15: Dice of Doom, a Game Written in the Functional Style
17.1 The Rules of Dice of Doom
17.2 A Sample Game of Dice of Doom
17.3 Implementing Dice of Doom, Version 1
17.4 Creating an Intelligent Computer Opponent
17.5 Making Dice of Doom Faster
17.6 What You've Learned
Chapter 16: The Magic of Lisp Macros
18.1 A Simple Lisp Macro
18.2 More Complex Macros
18.3 Macros: Dangers and Alternatives
18.4 What You've Learned
Chapter 17: Domain-Specific Languages
19.1 What Is a Domain?
19.2 Writing SVG Files
19.3 Creating Custom Game Commands for Wizard's Adventure Game
19.4 What You've Learned
Chapter 18: Lazy Programming
20.1 Adding Lazy Evaluation to Lisp
20.2 Dice of Doom, Version 2
20.3 Making Our AI Work onnnnnn Larger Game Boards
20.4 What You've Learned
Chapter 19: Creating a Graphical, Web-Based Version of Dice of Doom
21.1 Drawing the Game Board Using the SVG Format
21.2 Building the Web Server Interface
21.3 Playing Version 3 of Dice of Doom
21.4 What You've Learned
Chapter 20: Making Dice of Doom More Fun
22.1 Increasing the Number of Players
22.2 Rolling the Dice
22.3 Improving the Dice of Doom Reinforcement Rules
22.4 Conclusion
Epilogue
Functional Guild Cruiser
Macro Guild Melee Fighters
Restart Guild Armored Fighter
Generic Setter Guild Supply Ship
DSL Guild Hot Rods
CLOS Guild Battleship
The Continuation Guild Rocket Pods
Brevity Guild Micro Fighter
Multicore Guild Formation Fighters
The Lazy Guild Frigate
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