The year 2004 has been a good year for Lisp. We had lots of exciting news, new libraries, new CL implementation releases, new blogs, and of course a new Lisp book. Zach Beane created a nice timeline of events.

To round up this year I'm happy to report that Gary Cornell sent me this email to clarify the Apress position on the publication of On Lisp by Paul Graham:

Well as the publisher of Apress I thought I should weigh in. We will publish the book as soon as Paul Graham gives us the manuscript. The book isn't so much "cancelled" as postponed... We just don't know until when.

We want to publish it, trust me.

Gary Cornell

BTW: We are very interested in in errata, bug reports and suggestions regarding "Successful Lisp". Please send them to fix@bookfix.com and don't forget to mention the revision and build ID of your copy of SL.

Conrad Barski of "Casting SPELs in Lisp" fame has written a new tutorial:

The Quick'n Dirty Guide for Building, Programming, and Hosting Your Own Debian LINUX, Tomcat and SISC Scheme Web Server in 30 Minutes and for 30 Dollars Without a Headache

Cool.

You get faster delivery (4 business days) and a better price ($40,-), if you order Successful Lisp from our Amazon.com Marketplace account.

We provide volume discounts, if you order more than three copies of Successful Lisp by email to orders@bookfix.com. Payments for email orders are processed via Paypal.

We now have an entry in the Amazon.com index. They do not stock the book yet, but you can order it as a "used" book and I'll get the book printed and delivered to you directly:

Successful Lisp : How to Understand and Use Common Lisp

Edi Weitz released the first version of RDNZL (pronounced "Redunzl") - A .NET layer for Common Lisp. Way cool.

We now have an entry in the amazon.de index. They do not stock the book yet, but you can order it as a "used" book and I'll get the book printed and delivered to you directly:

Successful Lisp : How to Understand and Use Common Lisp

Via Mario Mommer on #lisp comes the news that Lars Brinkhoff posted parts of his email conversation with Apress about the re-publication of On Lisp by Paul Graham on c.l.l:

Unfortunately, [the On Lisp reprint] was canceled early in the production and I am not aware of any plan to publish that book.

Regards,
Stella Lim
Sales Assistant

How bloody is that? Bummer.

PubSub's LinkRanks provides an interesting perspective of the relative popularity of lispmeister.com in the blog-sphere:

• lispmeister.com ranks 7709
• lemonodor.com ranks 2848
• paulgraham.com ranks 334
• boingboing.net ranks 19

Not bad for an obscure Lisp related blog.

Just in time for some seasonal shopping:

Successful Lisp is finally in print!

We are still waiting for the amazon.com index entry. In the US this is a manual process and might take a couple of days. Until then we will serve all orders via the direct order page of our printer.

The setup of our print on demand process is quite interesting. The actual location of the printing depends on the delivery address. If your order goes to a US address, the book gets printed in the US. If it goes to a European address it gets printed in the Netherlands. Australian orders get printed down under. It usually takes three days for an order to be delivered.

Still searching for a seasonal present for your favourite geek? Buy a copy of SL and a tshirt!

Manuel Odendahl released his presentation from last month's Lisp meeting in Hamburg and some code that goes along with it. BKNR, "the russian spacecraft launch platform for LISP satellites", gets more interesting each time I have a look at it. Sputnik is the first public release of BKNR.

Conrad Barsky announced his Lisp comic book Casting SPELs in LISP on c.l.l. I knew he was talented, but this is awesome!

Now we're going to learn an incredibly powerful feature of LISP: Creating SPELs!

SPEL is short for "Semantic Program Enhancement Logic" and lets us create new behavior inside the world of our computer code that changes the LISP language at a fundamental level in order to customize its behavior for our needs- It's the part of LISP that looks most like magic.

I like this cool SPEL as a synonym for macro. Watch me cast this SPEL!

Recently we inherited several big boxes (about 1 cubic meter!) of LEGO from the neighbor's boys downstairs. Playing LEGO with my kids got me back into it's powerful design space. When you ask good software designers about childhood influences they usually name two factors: LEGO and set theory (new math).

Some twenty years ago Peter Glaser was among the first who wrote [1,2] about the connection between LEGO and programming. He called it "Hirn-LEGO" which translates to "Brain-LEGO". I always thought "Gedanken-LEGO", as in Gedanken experiment, was more appropriate.

To me Lisp is the LEGO of programming languages:

• Both were invented during the 1950s.
• As the basic building material the list resembles the classic 8 stud brick of LEGO.
• The REPL makes programming as interactive as plugging red bricks onto the green baseplate.
• No syntactic sugar, just plug and play.
• Nothing is glued together forever. Anything can be changed even at runtime.
• You can use macros to add new specialized bricks to your vocabulary.

References:
[1] Glaser, Peter: [Chaos CD][HaBi 1]- Das BASIC-Gefühl - Vom Leben mit einem MicroComputer, 1985
[2] Glaser, Peter: The BASIC Feeling or Life with a (Micro) Computer, 1985
[3] Halfbakery: Lego Programming
[4] Forth - the LEGO of Programming Languages

I switched to using Google to provide searching for this blog. Give it a try!

Just received to very good books:

• The Art of Doing Science and Engineering - Learning to Learn by Richard W. Hamming

  This book is intended to instill in the reader a style of thinking that will enhance his ability to function as a problem solver of complex technical issues.

  Hamming is simply amazing! The three chapters about artificial intelligence alone make it a very valuable ressource. Highly recommended.
  Amazon.com doesn't keep it in stock, but you can order it directly from www.routledge.com (search for "hamming").
• Curious Minds - How a Child Becomes a Scientist edited by John Brockman contains 27 essays by scientist about the question "What happened when you were a kid that led you to pursue a life in science?". A very inspiring book even for non-scientists.

Amazingly enough I've just sold the galley proof of Successful Lisp to a book collector with deep pockets.