It is very good in that it contains a wealth of information on all aspects of implementing a lisp interpreter/compiler. It is just a little bit baroque in style, but I suspect this is because it has been translated from French to English. Overall, great book.
( My copy is falling apart. I heard some rumours there was going to be a new edition but I can't find any supporting evidence online.)
That's good to hear. On the author's website, he says the new edition bears the new name "Principes d'implantation de Scheme et Lisp". Looks like it hasn't been translated to English yet, unfortunately. Either way, the older edition looks like it's worth it. Thanks!
(Yes, it really is "implantation", not "implementation"; the word apparently means both "setting up" (think "planting") and "implanting". Looking through the sample first chapter, I think "implantation" is probably the standard French equivalent of "implementation"; can someone who knows French better than I do confirm or correct this?)
If you have read all the other books "completely", you are not ready for LiSP. It's one of the most demanding Lisp books out there. It took me a year just to grok the chapter on denotational semantics of Lisp. Quinnec is a PL insider and writes[1] for a crowd of his peers.
CQ's style is not mainstream lisp style by the way, he is an academic and the books finds it hard to shake that.
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[1] LiSP wasn't "written", but collected from his lectures and other publications. You can assemble it yourself from the Quinnec papers, though you will be missing a lot of the style.
> If you have read all the other books "completely"
Presumably you meant "If you haven't read all the other books", unless you intended to imply that even if one has read all the other books listed, one still isn't ready for Lisp in Small Pieces!
How good is "Lisp in Small Pieces"? I might get that one next.