[1-3] Scheme books, introductions, documentation, periodicals, journals, and conference proceedings.
Introductions to Scheme:
The following four books from MIT Press are listed in order of
increasing difficulty. The first is good for the complete novice,
the second for students with little or no previous exposure to programming,
and the third and fourth for more advanced students. The third and
fourth may also be used to learn a variety of powerful programming
language concepts. One of these books will suit your needs.
1. Daniel P. Friedman and M. Felleisen.
"The Little LISPer"
MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 3rd printing, 1989. ISBN 0-262-56038-0.
Science Research Associates (Chicago), 3rd ed, 1989. 206 pages.
Good for a quick introduction. Uses Scheme instead of Common Lisp.
(The book uses a dialect of Scheme with footnotes about translating to
Scheme or Common Lisp. The footnotes won't allow a non-expert to use
Common Lisp for the advanced chapters because of the complexity.)
2. Brian Harvey and Matthew Wright
"Simply Scheme: Introducing Computer Science"
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994. 583 pages.
ISBN 0-262-08226-8. $49.95.
This book is ideal for students with little or no previous exposure to
programming. The book is designed to be used before SICP (the authors
call it a SICP "prequel"), and makes Scheme fun by sheltering the
students from potentially confusing technical details. Unlike Pascal
or C, the emphasis is on ideas, not obscure matters of syntax and
arbitrary rules of style. High schools who have shied away from using
Scheme because they found SICP to be too challenging should consider
using this book instead.
The text gradually and gently introduces students to some of the key
concepts of programming in Scheme. It starts off with functions and
function composition and continues with the notion of functions as
data (first-class functions) and programs that write programs
(higher-order functions). Since the complexity of the language is
hidden, students can get involved in some of the more interesting and
fun aspects of the language earlier than in other texts. Then the
book progresses through the more complicated concepts of lambda,
recursion, data abstraction and procedural abstraction, and concludes
with sequential techniques, but with careful attention to topics
students often find difficult. There are five chapters on recursion
alone! There's also a pitfalls section at the end of most chapters to
help students recognize and avoid common errors.
The book uses several programs as examples, including a tic-tac-toe
program, a pattern matcher, a miniature spreadsheet, and a simple
database program. Source code for the programs is available by
anonymous ftp from anarres.cs.berkeley.edu:/pub/scheme/, or for $10 on
IBM or Macintosh diskettes from the publisher.
3. Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, with Julie Sussman.
"Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs"
MIT Press (Cambridge, MA) and McGraw-Hill (New York), 1985.
542 pages. ISBN 0-262-01077-1, $55. The teacher's manual, which is
also available from MIT Press (ISBN 0-262-51046-4 $20), does NOT
contain solutions to the exercises, but does contain hints on
teaching with the book.
Starts off introductory, but rapidly gets into powerful
Lisp-particular constructs, such as using closures,
building interpreters, compilers and object-oriented systems. Often
referred to by its acronym, SICP, which is pronounced "Sick-Pee". This
is the classical text for teaching program design using Scheme,
and everybody should read it at least once. MIT problem sets are
available from the repositories, and materials from Gustavus
Adolphus College are available from ftp.gac.edu:/pub/SICP/.
4. George Springer and Daniel P. Friedman
"Scheme and the Art of Programming"
MIT Press and McGraw Hill, 1990, 596 pages.
ISBN 0-262-19288-8, $50.
Introduces basic concepts of programming in Scheme. Also deals with
object oriented programming, co-routining, continuations. Gives
numerous examples. Has more of an emphasis on teaching Scheme than
SICP, and can be seen as an alternative to SICP. Source code from the
chapters is available from
ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/scheme-repository/doc/lit/sap/
5. Iain Ferguson, Edward Martin and Burt Kaufman.
Foreword by Daniel Friedman.
"The Schemer's Guide: Second Edition"
Schemers Inc., Ft. Lauderdale, FL, 1995. (see EdScheme entry in [2-2])
330 pages, ISBN 0-9628745-2-3, $35.95.
This book assumes no previous programming experience and is ideal
for high school or college students. The book presents
the elements of modern computer programming in an easy-to-follow and
entertaining manner. It gently introduces students to the Scheme
programming language, guiding them through such concepts as
functional programming, recursion, data structures, higher order
functions, delayed evaluation, and object-oriented programming. The
text concludes with a significant game-playing project
involving artificial intelligence. The book strikes a good balance
between theory and practice, while nurturing good programming
practices. The Schemer's Guide has a proven track record of several
years use in teaching the art of Scheme programming to high school
students and college undergraduates. A comprehensive teacher's guide
and an additional set of resource materials including worksheets,
quizzes, projects, and exams are available to instructors using this
text. (A Spanish translation will be available by August 1995.)
Older Introductions to Scheme:
1. Smith, Jerry D.
"Introduction to Scheme"
Prentice Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1988, 324 pages.
Focuses on PC Scheme.
2. Michael Eisenberg
"Programming in Scheme"
Scientific Press (Redwood City, CA), 1988. 304 pages.
3. Two articles in BYTE Magazine, February 1988, by Abelson and
Sussman, and Clinger.
Online Introductions to Scheme:
1. The Ken Dickey article, "The Scheme Programming Language", in
COMPUTER LANGUAGES magazine, June 1992, is available from the
Scheme Repository at
ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/scheme-repository/doc/pubs/intro.txt
The Revised^4 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme is also
available from the Scheme Repository.
2. The Info files from the MIT Scheme implementation.
ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/scheme-repository/imp/MIT-Scheme-7.3/doc
3. "Introductory Scheme" by Joseph W. Lavinus and James D. Arthur,
<lavinus@virginia.edu>. Available from the Lisp Utilities
Repository as ftp.cs.cmu.edu:/user/ai/lang/scheme/doc/intro/
as scmintro.tgz.
Scheme and Artificial Intelligence:
1. Wolfgang Kreutzer and Bruce McKenzie
"Programming for Artificial Intelligence:
Methods, Tools and Applications"
Addison-Wesley (Reading, MA), 1990. 682 pages.
ISBN 0-201-41621-2.
Discusses Scheme, Prolog, and Smalltalk, gives an overview of
the history and philosophy of AI, surveys three major
programming paradigms (procedural, declarative, and
object-oriented), and metaphors to AI programming.
Source code from the chapters is available from
ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/scheme-repository/lit/
as aibook.tar.Z. Some of the programs will only run under MacScheme.
Scheme-based Computer Science Texts:
1. Vincent Manis and James Little
"The Schematics of Computation"
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1995. 848 pages
ISBN 0-13-834284-9 (North America), $41
ISBN 0-13-433772-7 (International).
For a copy of the publication announcement, see
ftp.cs.cmu.edu:/user/ai/pubs/books/announce/manis95
General Scheme reference books include:
1. K. Dybvig
"The Scheme programming language"
Prentice Hall, 1987.
Good reference for Scheme.
Scheme-related periodicals include:
1. LISP Pointers.
Published by ACM SIGPLAN six times a year. Volume 1, Number 1
was April-May 1987.
Subscriptions: ACM Members $12; ACM Student Members $7; Non-ACM
members $25. Mail checks payable to the ACM to ACM Inc., PO Box
12115, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10249.
2. LISP and Symbolic Computation, Kluwer Academic Press. Volume 1
was published in 1989. (jlz@lucid.com is the editor). ISSN 0892-4635.
Subscriptions: Institutions $169; Individuals $80. Add $8 for
air mail. Kluwer Academic Publishers, PO Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht,
The Netherlands, or Kluwer Academic Publishers, PO Box 358, Accord
Station, Hingham, MA 02018-0358.
3. Proceedings of the biannual ACM Lisp and Functional Programming
Conference. (First one was in 1980.)
4. Proceedings of the annual Lisp Users and Vendors Conference.
See also the Scheme Bibliography from the Scheme Repository
(ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/scheme-repository/) for additional readings.
A large number of technical reports on Scheme are now available in the
text section (ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/scheme-repository/txt/).
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