Land of Lisp
Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time!
by Conrad Barski, M.D.

October 2010, 504 pp.
ISBN: 978-1-59327-281-4

$49.95

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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 Lisp by showing you how to write several complete Lisp-based games, including a text adventure, an evolution simulation, and a robot battle. While building these games, you'll learn the core concepts of Lisp programming, such as data types, recursion, input/output, object-oriented programming, and macros. And thanks to the power of Lisp, the code is short. Rather than bogging things down with reference information that is easily found online, Land of Lisp focuses on using Lisp for real programming. While not a cartoon guide like our Manga Guides, the book is filled with author Conrad Barski's brilliant Lisp cartoons (featuring a Lisp alien and other characters) that are sure to appeal to many Lisp fans and, in the tradition of all No Starch Press titles, make the learning more fun.

About the Author

Conrad Barski has an M.D. from the University of Miami, as well as nearly 20 years of programming experience. Currently, he is developing cardiology software for Wolters Kluwer Health. He is also an avid cartoonist, having created the popular alien Lisp mascot, as well as many graphical web tutorials, including the "Casting SPELs" series. He is active in the D.C. developer community and an organizer of FringeDC, a group interested in fringe programming languages, where he gets to indulge in his love for "Lispy" programming languages with other D.C. language geeks.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Section I: Lisp Is Power
Chapter 1: Getting Started with Lisp
Chapter 2: Our First Lisp Program
Chapter 3: The Syntax of Lisp Code

Section II: Lisp Is Symmetry
Chapter 4: Conditions
Chapter 5: Learning Lisp Text and Console Programming... By Building a Text Game Engine!
Chapter 6: Interacting with the World: Reading and Printing in Lisp
Chapter 6.5: Lambda: A Function So Important It Deserves Its Own Chapter
Chapter 7: More About Lists
Chapter 8: This Ain't Your Daddy's Wumpus
Chapter 9: Advanced Data Types and Generic Programming

Section III: Lisp Is Hacking
Chapter 10: loop and format: The Seedy Underbelly of Lisp
Chapter 11: Printing Text with the format Function
Chapter 12: Working with Streams
Chapter 13: Let's Create a Web Server!

Interlude: Functional Programming Is Beautiful

Section IV: Lisp Is Science
Chapter 14: Ramping Lisp Up a Notch with Functional Programming
Chapter 15: Dice of Doom: A Game Written in the Functional Style
Chapter 16: The Magic of Lisp Macros
Chapter 17: Domain Specific Languages
Chapter 18: Lazy Programming
Chapter 19: Adding Graphics to Dice of Doom
Chapter 20: Making Dice of Doom More Fun

Epilogue: Land of Lisp: Secrets of the Seven Guilds

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