What is the best alternative to Practical Common Lisp?
Pro Free
A free version of the book can be downloaded on Paul Graham's website.
Pro Clear language
It's written in an simple, informal, yet articulate style.
Con Not a good starting placing for beginners
This book requires the reader to already have an intermediate-level experience with Common Lisp.
Pro Human review and feedback
Rather than merely test for code correctness, Exercism uses peer review to improve general programming techniques. Users are encouraged to comment on others' solutions, and refine their own based on feedback.
Pro Practice with production tools
Unlike many code practice websites, Exercism requires the user to develop and test entirely offline, submitting only the finished code. This promotes familiarity with essential tools and workflow, not just the bare language.
Con Custom commandline client
Exercism requires using a CLI utility to fetch and submit exercises. This is inconvenient compared to web-only alternatives, and poses an additional barrier to entry for some users.
Pro Excellently covers real-world web application building
Land of Lisp teaches the fundamentals of building web applications from writing your own server to creating an interactive webapp.
Pro You can learn Lisp while writing games
Land of Lisp teaches all necessary steps to create a graphical game as a webapp.
Pro Includes humorous illustrators to make the learning experience more pleasurable
The author uses plenty of amusing illustrations and jokes to keep the reader interested.
Con Many terms are not explained
The book starts off fairly slow and easy to grasp. However after the first few chapters, the author starts including new terms and concepts that had not been introduced/explained.
Pro Concepts are clearly explained
This book will give the reader a solid understanding of programming fundamentals. All concepts are very well explained using diagrams, exercises (with answers provided), analogies and more.
Pro Available free online
This book is available online for free as a PDF.
Con Poor formatting in Kindle edition
Formatting of code examples in the Kindle version is lost, resulting in the code being extremely difficult to follow and read.
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