Matthias Felleisen

Daniel P. Friedman

The notion that "thinking about computing is one of the most exciting things the human mind can do" sets both The Little Schemer (formerly known as The Little LISPer) and its new companion volume, The Seasoned Schemer, apart from other books on LISP. The authors' enthusiasm for their subject is compelling as they present abstract concepts in a humorous and easy-to-grasp fashion. Together, these books will open new doors of thought to anyone who wants to find out what computing is really about. The Little Schemer introduces computing as an extension of arithmetic and algebra; things that everyone studies in grade school and high school. It introduces programs as recursive functions and briefly discusses the limits of what computers can do. The authors use the programming language Scheme, and interesting foods to illustrate these abstract ideas. The Seasoned Schemer informs the reader about additional dimensions of computing: functions as values, change of state, and exceptional cases. The Little LISPer has been a popular introduction to LISP for many years. It had appeared in French and Japanese. The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer are worthy successors and will prove equally popular as textbooks for Scheme courses as well as companion texts for any complete introductory course in Computer Science.

The Little Schemer

David Thrane Christiansen

An introduction to dependent types, demonstrating the most beautiful aspects, one step at a time. A program's type describes its behavior. Dependent types are a first-class part of a language, and are much more powerful than other kinds of types; using just one language for types and programs allows program descriptions to be as powerful as the programs they describe. The Little Typer explains dependent types, beginning with a very small language that looks very much like Scheme and extending it to cover both programming with dependent types and using dependent types for mathematical reasoning. Readers should be familiar with the basics of a Lisp-like programming language, as presented in the first four chapters of The Little Schemer. The first five chapters of The Little Typer provide the needed tools to understand dependent types; the remaining chapters use these tools to build a bridge between mathematics and programming. Readers will learn that tools they know from programming—pairs, lists, functions, and recursion—can also capture patterns of reasoning. The Little Typer does not attempt to teach either practical programming skills or a fully rigorous approach to types. Instead, it demonstrates the most beautiful aspects as simply as possible, one step at a time.

The Little Typer

The Seasoned Schemer

Oleg Kiselyov

William E. Byrd

The goal of The Reasoned Schemer is to help the functional programmer think logically and the logic programmer think functionally. The authors of The Reasoned Schemer believe that logic programming is a natural extension of functional programming, and they demonstrate this by extending the functional language Scheme with logical constructs -- thereby combining the benefits of both styles. The extension encapsulates most of the ideas in the logic programming language Prolog. The pedagogical method of The Reasoned Schemer is a series of questions and answers, which proceed with the characteristic humor that marked The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer. Familiarity with a functional language or with the first eight chapters of The Little Schemer is assumed. Adding logic capabilities required the introduction of new forms. The authors' goal is to show to what extent writing logic programs is the same as writing functional programs using these forms. In this way, the reader of The Reasoned Schemer will come to understand how simple logic programming is and how easy it is to define functions that behave like relations.

The Reasoned Schemer

Mitchell Wand

Christopher Thomas Haynes

This textbook offers an understanding of the essential concepts of programming languages. The text uses interpreters, written in Scheme, to express the semantics of many essential language elements in a way that is both clear and directly executable.

Essentials of Programming Languages

foreword by Ralph E. Johnson and drawings by Duane Bibby 'This is a book of 'why' not 'how.' If you are interested in the nature of computation and curious about the very idea behind object orientation, this book is for you. This book will engage your brain (if not your tummy). Through its sparkling interactive style, you will learn about three essential OO concepts: interfaces, visitors, and factories. A refreshing change from the 'yet another Java book' phenomenon. Every serious Java programmer should own a copy.' -- Gary McGraw, Ph.D., Research Scientist at Reliable Software Technologies and coauthor of Java Security Java is a new object-oriented programming language that was developed by Sun Microsystems for programming the Internet and intelligent appliances. In a very short time it has become one of the most widely used programming languages for education as well as commercial applications. Design patterns, which have moved object-oriented programming to a new level, provide programmers with a language to communicate with others about their designs. As a result, programs become more readable, more reusable, and more easily extensible. In this book, Matthias Felleisen and Daniel Friedman use a small subset of Java to introduce pattern-directed program design. With their usual clarity and flair, they gently guide readers through the fundamentals of object-oriented programming and pattern-based design. Readers new to programming, as well as those with some background, will enjoy their learning experience as they work their way through Felleisen and Friedman's dialogue. src='/graphics/yellowball.gif' href='/books/FELTP/Java-fm.html'Foreword and Preface

A Little Java, a Few Patterns

Carl Eastlund

An introduction to writing proofs about computer programs, written in an accessible question-and-answer style, complete with step-by-step examples and a simple proof assistant. The Little Prover introduces inductive proofs as a way to determine facts about computer programs. It is written in an approachable, engaging style of question-and-answer, with the characteristic humor of The Little Schemer (fourth edition, MIT Press). Sometimes the best way to learn something is to sit down and do it; the book takes readers through step-by-step examples showing how to write inductive proofs. The Little Prover assumes only knowledge of recursive programs and lists (as presented in the first three chapters of The Little Schemer) and uses only a few terms beyond what novice programmers already know. The book comes with a simple proof assistant to help readers work through the book and complete solutions to every example.

The Little Prover

George Springer

Answer book

Scheme and the Art of Programming

Jason Hemann

The goal of this book is to show the beauty and elegance of relational programming, which captures the essence of logic programming. The book shows how to implement a relational programming language in Scheme, or in any other functional language, and demonstrates the remarkable flexibility of the resulting relational programs

Anurag Mendhekar

A highly accessible, step-by-step introduction to deep learning, written in an engaging, question-and-answer style. The Little Learner introduces deep learning from the bottom up, inviting students to learn by doing. With the characteristic humor and Socratic approach of classroom favorites The Little Schemer and The Little Typer, this kindred text explains the workings of deep neural networks by constructing them incrementally from first principles using little programs that build on one another. Starting from scratch, the reader is led through a complete implementation of a substantial application: a recognizer for noisy Morse code signals. Example-driven and highly accessible, The Little Learner covers all of the concepts necessary to develop an intuitive understanding of the workings of deep neural networks, including tensors, extended operators, gradient descent algorithms, artificial neurons, dense networks, convolutional networks, residual networks, and automatic differentiation. Conversational style, illustrations, and question-and-answer format make deep learning accessible and fun Incremental approach constructs advanced concepts from first principles Presents key ideas of machine learning using a small, manageable subset of the Scheme language Suitable for anyone with knowledge of high school math and some programming experience

A Straight Line to Deep Learning

The Little Learner

This is the first introduction to computer programming text to focus on functional programming which is not too mathematically rigorous for freshmen. The text features an introduction to the Scheme programming language and real-world examples and exercises which are easy to follow and learn from.

1. Inductive sets of data 2. Data abstraction 3. Expressions 4. State 5. Continuation-passing interpreters 6. Continuation-passing style 7. Types 8. Modules 9. Objects and classes.

Scheme is the fast track to getting started in programming. Its clear semantics, simple syntax, and interactive environment enable the beginning student to write sophisticated programs after just two brief chapters. As a first introduction to programming, it is an ideal vehicle for learning to reason correctly about computation. Starting from a few fundamental concepts and principles - procedural and syntactic abstractions, recursion, iteration, state, and control - Springer and Friedman develop the ideas and techniques of programming. They include both traditional topics such as numeric and symbolic computation, and also cover current issues such as streams, object-oriented programming and continuations for abstracting control. The presentation is designed for the introductory college student It is more sophisticated and complete than The Little LISPer, but not as advanced as Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. Springer and Freidman provide a solid introduction to data abstraction by presenting topics such as list strings, vectors, matrices, sets, relations, and functions. Among the examples used to illustrate object oriented programming are stacks, queues, circular lists, hash tables, and a gas station simulation. George Springer is Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science and Daniel P. Friedman is Professor of Computer Science. Both are at Indiana University, one of the centers for research and development of Scheme.

Daniel P. Friedman

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