One last chapter to review! Last chance! One-day only!

From: Peter Seibel (peter_at_javamonkey.com)
Date: 02/20/05

  • Next message: William Bland: "Re: One last chapter to review! Last chance! One-day only!" 
    Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 00:57:14 GMT

    I just put up a substantially revised 2nd draft of the introduction to
    my book. All other chapters have been through copy-edit or even page
    proof. The introduction has been, in many ways, the hardest chapter to
    write and I may yet rewrite the whole thing again. My goal is to draw
    in people who already have some interest in Lisp and, ideally, also to
    be able to pique the curiosity of someone who is even a little
    sceptical about Lisp. If you have a chance to look at this chapter
    today or tomorrow (Saturday or Sunday), I'd be quite to know whether
    you think this version will serve those purposes. (Don't bother with
    punctuation and spelling errors--my copy editor is quite good at
    catching that stuff and this hasn't gone to her yet. Plus, as I say,
    this may be dramatically rewritten one more time.) The new version is
    linked off the main page at:

      <http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/>

    in HTML and PDF and "source" as:

      <http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/introduction-why-lisp.html>
      <http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/introduction-why-lisp.pdf>
      <http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/introduction-why-lisp.txt>

    For comparison, you can also see the old intro at:

      <http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/intro-1st-draft.html>
      <http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/intro-1st-draft.pdf>

    As a final bit of context, here's the text of a letter to the reader
    that will appear on the back cover of the book.

      Dear Reader,

      "Practical Common Lisp" ... isn't that an oxymoron? If you're like
      most programmers, you probably know something about Lisp--from a
      comp sci course in college or from learning enough Elisp to
      customize Emacs a bit. Or maybe you just know someone who won't shut
      up about Lisp, the greatest language ever. But you probably never
      figured you'd see "practical" and "Lisp" in the same book title.

      Yet, you're reading this; you must want to know more. Maybe you
      believe learning Lisp will make you a better programmer in any
      language. Or maybe you just want to know what those Lisp fanatics
      are yammering about all the time. Or maybe you have learned some
      Lisp but haven't quite made the leap to using it to write
      interesting software.

      If any of those is true, this book is for you. Using Common Lisp, an
      ANSI standardized, industrial-strength dialect of Lisp, I show you
      how to write software that goes well beyond silly academic exercises
      or trivial editor customizations. And I show you how Lisp--even with
      many of its features adopted by other languages--still has a few
      tricks up its sleeve.

      But unlike many Lisp books, this one doesn't just touch on a few of
      Lisp's greatest features and then leave you on your own to actually
      use them. I cover all the language features you'll need to write
      real programs and devote well over a third of the book to developing
      non-trivial software--a statistical spam filter; a library for
      parsing binary files; and a server for streaming MP3s over a network
      complete with an online MP3 database and web interface.

      So turn the book over, open it up, and see for yourself how
      eminently practical using the greatest language ever invented can
      be.

      Sincerely,
      Peter Seibel

    Thanks.

    -Peter 

    -- 
Peter Seibel                                      peter@javamonkey.com
         Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp
  • Next message: William Bland: "Re: One last chapter to review! Last chance! One-day only!"

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