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Lisp in Small Pieces

Christian Queinnec · 14 HN comments
HN Books has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention "Lisp in Small Pieces" by Christian Queinnec.
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Amazon Summary
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. The book is in two parts. The first starts from a simple evaluation function and enriches it with multiple name spaces, continuations and side-effects with commented variants, while at the same time the language used to define these features is reduced to a simple lambda-calculus. Denotational semantics is then naturally introduced. The second part focuses more on implementation techniques and discusses precompilation for fast interpretation: threaded code or bytecode; compilation towards C. Some extensions are also described such as dynamic evaluation, reflection, macros and objects. This will become the new standard reference for people wanting to know more about the Lisp family of languages: how they work, how they are implemented, what their variants are and why such variants exist. The full code is supplied (and also available over the Net). A large bibliography is given as well as a considerable number of exercises. Thus it may also be used by students to accompany second courses on Lisp or Scheme.
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Hacker News Stories and Comments

All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this book.
Dec 06, 2020 · DonaldFisk on Between two Lisps
There's Lisp In Small Pieces by Christian Queinnec (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lisp-Small-Pieces-Christian-Queinne...), and if you want to look into CLOS in depth, there's The Art of the Metaobject Protocol by Kiczales, des Rivieres, and Bobrow (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Metaobject-Protocol-MIT-Press/d...). There's also a good older text, Anatomy of Lisp by John Allen (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anatomy-LISP-McGraw-Hill-computer-s...).
Jan 08, 2020 · jwhitlark on C Compiler from Scratch
Lisp in Small Pieces https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521545668/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i... is excellent, and I think would help.
APL is not so much a model of computation as a new notation for semantics which already exist. The real semantic explanation of APL is set theory and traditional mathematics.

Probably the best deep ground-level explanation of APL is Iverson’s paper “Notation as a tool of thought.” [0]

The bootstrapping explanation you describe sounds a lot like what Paul Graham did in “On Lisp” [1] and in a much more complex fashion, Queinnec in “Lisp in Small Pieces” [2], both highly recommended.

[0] https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/tot.htm

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html

[2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521545668

kd0amg
It takes a fair amount of work on top of "set theory and traditional mathematics" if you want to actually state a semantics for APL.
Lisp in Small Pieces [0] has a good explanation on how to implement Continuation based compilars

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Lisp-Small-Pieces-Christian-Queinnec/...

Dec 16, 2016 · pjmlp on The Idea of Lisp
Yes, this quite good book, "Lisp in Small Pieces"

https://www.amazon.com/Lisp-Small-Pieces-Christian-Queinnec/...

if you really want to learn to build lisp, please lookup "lisp in small pieces" http://www.amazon.com/Lisp-Small-Pieces-Christian-Queinnec/d...
blue1
For french speakers, there is a newer edition of that book which has never been translated to english. It is titled "Principes d'implantation de Scheme et Lisp" and is available here:

http://paracamplus.com/spip/?page=livre&isbn=978-2-916466-03...

runevault
I still remember when Amazon CA accidentally had this on sale for a pittance, then axed all the orders when people tried to buy it. Really should get a copy at some point.
agumonkey
Ha, they did cancel the orders ?

The fun of seeing a lisp book on amazon's best sellers all of a sudden.

ps: Highly valuable book, it's dense, theoretical but not too much, opens on a lot of other papers, and covers a large space about languages.

runevault
I think a few orders actually shipped, but the impression I got was the vast majority got cancelled, and yeah I've only heard wonderful things about the book, I just need to decide to drop the cash on it.
Zuider
Yeah they cancelled my order. The price (of a few cents) had been assigned by a software error. Amazon was most apologetic for their inability to ship the item, and compensated me with a $10.00 voucher.

On a related note, I found a copy of Adele Goldberg's 'Smalltalk 80: The Language' in a junk shop for 50 cents. When I checked Amazon, the listed price was over five thousand dollars (due to automated bidding bots from rival booksellers).

nabla9
Not just for learning lisp. This is must-read text for anyone developing interpreters or compilers development or implementing dynamic languages.
pjscott
For a much smaller piece, this technical report contains a two-page compiler for a small Lisp to x86 assembly, from parsing to codegen, written as a series of Parsing Expression Grammar substitutions:

http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2010003_PEG.pdf

I admit that it's probably not the best thing to learn from at first, but it's truly a thing of beauty.

Feb 28, 2015 · webnrrd2k on Make a Lisp
Excellent -- a much gentler version of Lisp In Small Pieces. (http://www.amazon.com/Lisp-Small-Pieces-Christian-Queinnec/d...)
Richard Bird, Philip Wadler - Introduction to Functional Programming http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Functional-Programming-In...

Richard Bird - Pearls of Functional Algorithm Design http://www.amazon.com/Pearls-Functional-Algorithm-Design-Ric...

Christian Queinnec - Lisp in Small Pieces http://www.amazon.com/Lisp-Small-Pieces-Christian-Queinnec/d...

You might enjoy Lisp in Small Pieces. Is one of my favorite books

The book is in two parts. The first starts from a simple evaluation function and enriches it with multiple name spaces, continuations and side-effects with commented variants, while at the same time the language used to define these features is reduced to a simple lambda-calculus.

The second part focuses more on implementation techniques and discusses precompilation for fast interpretation: threaded code or bytecode; compilation towards C. Some extensions are also described such as dynamic evaluation, reflection, macros and objects.

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0521545668

Nzen
If anyone's considering it, now is the time. I've watched it for the last five months. The used price almost always hovers at 80 dollars. It is currently 54 dollars. I'd buy it myself if it weren't just going to sit on my shelf, unopened, the next five months.
mnemonik
Great book, although I found it hard parse sometimes (compared to say the later chapters of SICP) which I suspect is because it is translated from french. Either way, it puts so much information in one place, it is incredibly valuable.
My (pricey) favourite is Lisp In Small Pieces: http://www.amazon.com/Lisp-Small-Pieces-Christian-Queinnec/d...

Note that Peter Norvig gives it a five-star review.

(The affiliate link benefits DuckDuckGo.)

If you're interested in getting into the details of implementing a Lisp/Scheme interpreter and compiler, I highly recommend Lisp in Small Pieces: http://www.amazon.com/Lisp-Small-Pieces-Christian-Queinnec/d...
sedachv
mahmud turned me onto Abdulaziz Ghuloum's An Incremental Approach to Compiler Construction: http://scheme2006.cs.uchicago.edu/11-ghuloum.pdf ; I can't stop raving about it.
Everyone beat me to the punch, but my starting list for Common Lisp is:

1. A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/index.html

2. Practical Common Lisp http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/

3. ANSI Common Lisp http://www.paulgraham.com/acl.html

4. On Lisp http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html

5. Paradigms of Artifical Intelligence Programming http://norvig.com/paip.html

6. Lisp in Small Pieces http://www.amazon.com/Lisp-Small-Pieces-Christian-Queinnec/d...

SICP is also amazing...and there are at least three sets of videos to go with the book (Abelson/Sussman and HP/MIT, ArsDigita, and UC-Berkeley.)

Shooter
For Scheme:

1. How to Design Programs [ www.htdp.org ]

(1.5) I've heard good some good things about using Concrete Abstractions or Simply Scheme before SICP...

I know Simply Scheme introduces some non-standard functions, though. I've only glanced at both, so I can't give a full recommendation yet. I just ordered them both in hard copy. These two are probably only useful if you're still new to programming and want to gain more confidence before moving on to SICP.

http://gustavus.edu/+max/concrete-abstractions-pdfs/index.ht...

2. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs [ Buy the book and check out all three sets of videos...the instructor's manual is pretty much a waste of $, though, IMHO. ]

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