Product Description
drawings by Duane Bibby foreword and afterword by Guy L. Steele Jr.

"I learned more about LISP from this book than I have from any of the other LISP books I've read over the years. . . . While other books will tell you the mechanics of LISP, they can leave you largely uninformed on the style of problem-solving for which LISP is optimized. The Little LISPer teaches you how to think in the LISP language. . . an inexpensive, enjoyable introduction." -- Gregg Williams, Byte

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.

Download DrScheme - a graphical environment for developing Scheme programsAmazon.com Review
Friedman and Felleisen's The Seasoned Schemer picks up where their book, The Little Schemer, left off and focuses on the myriad uses of functions in Scheme. Using the same dialogue format as The Little Schemer, the authors demonstrate how Scheme's flexible facilities for handling functions give the program so much variety and power. Along the way, the authors also present a variety of other more sophisticated language constructs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Entertaining reading for people who know the material
The Seasoned Schemer continues where the The Little Schemer - 4th Edition (a truly marvelous book) left off. It aims to extend the readers understanding of programming techniques and the Scheme programming language. It covers many interesting topics like memoization, the interchangeability of functions and data, mutable state, and programming with continuations.

Unfortunately The Seasoned Schemer has a strong inclination towards inside jokes for people who already know the material. In the process of charming the experienced reader it risks losing novices. How does a reference to Alonzo Church using call-with-current-continuation tell the novice that letcc is not available in many Scheme implementations? Why is there no real explanation of when and where to apply the "12th commandment" (use letrec to remove arguments that do not change for recursive application)?Why does a discussion about using closures and functions to model data structures devolve into trivia about circular lists? The text often seems like a sequence of such programming gems littered in a book with few clues for eyes unaccustomed to recognizing gems.

People familiar with the subject matter will enjoy the charming and concise discussion of fundamental (and often difficult) ideas. Other readers are probably better served by reading a proper text book on programming in Scheme. It's a real pity though, because once you get the inside jokes this really is a fine book! Just don't use it as your first book on programming in LISP like languages.

Fishes?
Silence! stir not! for a whisper
Would affright thy pretty prey;
Not a motion, little lisper,
Else the fish will glide away.

A Valuable Extension To The Little Schemer
The book picks up and demonstrates using to letcc (call with current continuation) to speed up delivery of results or to simply forget pending applications and return to an outer list of s-expressions. Additionally there is more using of letrec and the demonstration of of using set!.The final chapter once again looks at creating the language within the language but this time including 'define' and using set! to update closures.If you felt reasonably confident with the Little Schemer you should be fine reading this extension book, and you will likely be much more confident with any lisp like languages having read it.

introduces the rest of scheme (almost)
The Seasoned Schemer continues where the Little Schemer left off introducing local variables via let and it's variations including letrec. Set!, the syntax for changing a variables value is introduced. Continuations, as used for escaping from an computation and for going back to previous position in code are also introduced. There are less references to the accomplishments of famous computer scientists in this book than in the Little Schemer which I found to be disappointing. However, I greatly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone wanting to increase their understanding of the Scheme programming language. Although scheme's vector data type is not introduced, I think you will have enough of an understanding of Scheme after reading this book to make substantial programs.

Excellent book on thinking recursively
This book is the second half of "The Little Schemer".Itexpects you to have mastered the previous volume, so it starts fast andpicks up speed from there.

It covers a lot of ground in a slim volume(just as in "The Little Schemer").This book introduces theconcepts of closures and call-with-current-continuation (among otherthings).

As with "The Little Schemer", this book's strength isin its socratic instruction method.Lessons are written and illustrated asconversations between the reader and the instructor (in question/answerformat).While this sounds strange, it is actually surprisingly effectiveas a means of learning the material.It might seem somewhat like roteinstruction, but it can often frame foreign concepts in a rememberablefashion.

Neither of these books require much in the way of background orfamiliarity with the material.They were created as a means of teachingnon-programmers to program in Scheme.However, I think they hold value fortrained programmers as well. ... Read more

Product Description
Digital sound synthesis has long been approached using standard digital filtering techniques. Newer synthesis strategies, however, make use of physical descriptions of musical instruments, and allow for much more realistic and complex sound production and thereby synthesis becomes a problem of simulation.

This book has a special focus on time domain finite difference methods presented within an audio framework. It covers time series and difference operators, and basic tools for the construction and analysis of finite difference schemes, including frequency-domain and energy-based methods, with special attention paid to problems inherent to sound synthesis. Various basic lumped systems and excitation mechanisms are covered, followed by a look at the 1D wave equation, linear bar and string vibration, acoustic tube modelling, and linear membrane and plate vibration. Various advanced topics, such as the nonlinear vibration of strings and plates, are given an elaborate treatment.

Key features:

• Includes a historical overview of digital sound synthesis techniques, highlighting the links between the various physical modelling methodologies.
• A pedagogical presentation containing over 150 problems and programming exercises, and numerous figures and diagrams, and code fragments in the MATLAB® programming language helps the reader with limited experience of numerical methods reach an understanding of this subject.
• Offers a complete treatment of all of the major families of musical instruments, including certain audio effects.

Numerical Sound Synthesis is suitable for audio and software engineers, and researchers in digital audio, sound synthesis and more general musical acoustics. Graduate students in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering or computer science, working on the more technical side of digital audio and sound synthesis, will also find this book of interest. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a AIR FORCE INST OF TECH WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB OH SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT report procured by the Pentagon and made available for public release. It has been reproduced in the best form available to the Pentagon. It is not spiral-bound, but rather assembled with Velobinding in a soft, white linen cover. The Storming Media report number is A757214. The abstract provided by the Pentagon follows: Deriving weights for a Value Focused Thinking (VFT) hierarchy demands considerable time and input from Decision Makers (DM) and Subject Matter Experts (SME). Often, the DMs and SMEs are the leaders of companies and organizations, and this required time is unrealistic with their schedules. In these situations, as well as scenarios where there no available DMs/SMEs, conventional means of weighting a VFT hierarchy are impossible, and any VFT analysis is halted. When historical data exists on evaluation measures and performance of alternatives, linear programming and genetic algorithm based optimization may be used to derive historically optimal weights for a hierarchy. Analysis may then be done to determine the utility of transposing these weights into a hierarchy to evaluate a current list of alternatives. This type of analysis is also useful in "first cut" weighting of a hierarchy, and therefore reduces the time demands for DMs/SMEs to complete the weighting process. This methodology can provide insight into any situation where historical information exists on ordinarily ranked, competing alternatives. ... Read more

Product Description
Includes diskette for IBM or TI systems ... Read more

Product Description
"Explore the art of programming with EdScheme! Scheme is a simple, elegant, language Lisp with superlative expressive power. The EdScheme implementation is a fast and efficient incremental optimizing complier that provides a friendly and convenient interactive programming enviornment." ... Read more

Product Description
Die Übersetzung der bewährten Einführung in die Informatik, entstanden am Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), wird seit Jahren erfolgreich in der Lehre eingesetzt. Schritt für Schritt werden Konstruktion und Abstraktion von Daten und Prozeduren dargestellt. Von der Modularisierung bis zum Problemlösen mit Registermaschinen werden verschiedene Programmierparadigmen entwikckelt und die effektive Handhabung von Komplexität gezeigt. Als Programmiersprache wird SCHEME verwendet, ein Dialekt von LISP. Alle Programme laufen in jeder dem IEEE-Standard entsprechenden SCHEME-Implementierung. ... Read more

Product Description
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Gambit, also called Gambit-C, is a free software Scheme implementation, consisting of a Scheme interpreter, and a compiler which compiles Scheme to C. Its documentation[1] claims conformance to the R4RS, R5RS, and IEEE standards, as well as several SRFIs. Gambit was first released 1988, and Gambit-C (that is, Gambit with the C backend) was first released 1994.Termite Scheme is a variant of Scheme implemented on top of Gambit-C. Termite is intended for distributed computing, it offers a simple and powerful message-passing model of concurrency, inspired by that of Erlang. ... Read more

Product Description
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In metadata a classification scheme is the descriptive information for an arrangement or division of objects into groups based on characteristics which the objects have in common. The ISO/IEC 11179 metadata registry standard uses classification schemes as a way to classify administered items, such as data elements, in a metadata registry. Metadata is loosely defined as data about data. Metadata is a concept that applies mainly to electronically archived or presented data and is used to describe the a) definition, b) structure and c) administration of data files with all contents in context to ease the use of the captured and archived data for further use. For example, a web page may include metadata specifying what language it's written in, what tools were used to create it, where to go for more on the subject and so on. ... Read more

Product Description
This is the first book that presents basic ideas ofoptimization methods that are applicable to strategic planning andoperations management, particularly in the field of transportation.The material of the book covers almost all parts of optimization andis a unique reference work in the field of operations research. Theauthor has written an invaluable manual for students who studyoptimization methods and their applications in strategic planning andoperations management. He describes the ideas behind the methods (withwhich the study of the methods usually starts) and substantiallyfacilitates further study of the methods using original scientificarticles rather than just textbooks. The book is also designed to be amanual for those specialists who work in the field of management andwho recognize optimization as the powerful tool for numerical analysisof the potential and of the competitiveness of enterprises. A specialchapter contains the basic mathematical notation and concepts usefulfor understanding the book and covers all the necessary mathematicalinformation. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY CA report procured by the Pentagon and made available for public release. It has been reproduced in the best form available to the Pentagon. It is not spiral-bound, but rather assembled with Velobinding in a soft, white linen cover. The Storming Media report number is A695793. The abstract provided by the Pentagon follows: In the Middle East, water is becoming a far more valuable natural resource than oil. Access to water has domestic and regional economic, political, and security implications for the Middle East. Water is likely to be the issue that sparks the next conflict in the Middle East. This thesis describes the impact of rapid population growth and urbanization, industrialization and pollution, and 'self-sufficiency' agricultural policies on the water resources of the Middle East. Current capacities of water renewal and water production are not likely to be capable of supporting the future growth of the Middle East without intense planning and management. Five regions of the Middle East are currently feeling the effects of water scarcity: the Arabian Peninsula, the Euphrates-Tigris Basin, the Jordan Basin, the Maghreb, and the Nile Basin. Information is also provided about the Arabian Peninsula, particularly Saudi Arabia. Various schemes to obtain additional water resources are explored including Turkey's proposed 'Peace Pipeline', which could supply water from Turkey to the countries of the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. 'Virtual Water' also is explored as a source of water for the Middle East. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is a journal article from Insurance Mathematics and Economics, published by Elsevier in . The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
This paper focuses on the impact of the stochastic evolution of the active membership population on the mismatch between assets and liabilities of a defined benefit pension scheme. Classical results in the actuarial literature on pension plan population theory have been extended to the stochastic case. The paper formulates the trade-off between risk and cost of contribution strategies. Then, using a constrained nonlinear programming approach, optimal contributions strategies have been derived and the trade-off solved by means of identifying an efficient frontier. Finally, a numerical application has been carried out, showing the inefficiency of certain classical normal cost methods. ... Read more

Product Description
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Kawa is a language framework written in Java that implements the programming language Scheme, and can be used to implement other languages. It is a part of the GNU project. The name "Kawa" comes from the Polish word for coffee - a play on words since Java is another familiar name for coffee. Beside scheme language you can access java object fields and methods. You can extend Kawa with java code (create scheme functions in java) and also combine kawa with other JVM Implementations. ... Read more