Advanced techniques-lisp.pdf

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title page

To my family, and to Jackie.

Preface

This book is intended for anyone who wants to become a better Lisp programmer.

It assumes some familiarity with Lisp, but not necessarily extensive programming

experience. The ﬁrst few chapters contain a fair amount of review. I hope that

these sections will be interesting to more experienced Lisp programmers as well,

because they present familiar subjects in a new light.

It’s difﬁcult to convey the essence of a programming language in one sentence,

but John Foderaro has come close:

Lisp is a programmable programming language.

There is more to Lisp than this, but the ability to bend Lisp to one’s will is a

large part of what distinguishes a Lisp expert from a novice. As well as writing

their programs down toward the language, experienced Lisp programmers build

the language up toward their programs. This book teaches how to program in the

bottom-up style for which Lisp is inherently well-suited.

Bottom-up Design

Bottom-up design is becoming more important as software grows in complexity.

Programs today may have to meet speciﬁcations which are extremely complex,

or even open-ended. Under such circumstances, the traditional top-down method

sometimes breaks down. In its place there has evolved a style of programming