A comprehensive first course in Scheme, covering all of its major features: abstraction, functional programming, data types, recursion, and semantic programming. Although the primary goal is to teach students to program in Scheme, this will be suitable for anyone taking a general programming principles course. Each chapter is divided into three sections: core, appendix , and problems. Most essential topics are covered in the core section, but it is assumed that most students will read the appendices and solve most of the problems - all of which require short Scheme procedures. As well as providing a thorough grounding in Scheme, the author discusses different programming paradigms in depth. An important theme throughout is that of "meta-programming", thus providing an insight into topics such as type-checking and overloading which might otherwise be missed.

This is the first introduction to computer programming text to focus on functional programming which is not too mathematically rigorous for freshmen. The text features an introduction to the Scheme programming language and real-world examples and exercises which are easy to follow and learn from.

Scheme provides a flexible and powerful language for programming embodying many of the best features of logical and functional programming. This enjoyable book provides readers with an introduction to programming in Scheme by constructing a series of interesting and re-usable programs. The book includes two diskettes containing MIT Scheme to run on Windows PCs.

The manual describes LISP, a formal mathematical language. LISP differs from most programming languages in three important ways. The first way is in the nature of the data. The LISP language is designed primarily for symbolic data processing used for symbolic calculations in differential and integral calculus, electrical circuit theory, mathematical logic, game playing, and other fields of artificial intelligence. The manual describes LISP, a formal mathematical language. LISP differs from most programming languages in three important ways. The first way is in the nature of the data. In the LISP language, all data are in the form of symbolic expressions usually referred to as S-expressions, of indefinite length, and which have a branching tree-type of structure, so that significant subexpressions can be readily isolated. In the LISP system, the bulk of the available memory is used for storing S-expressions in the form of list structures. The second distinction is that the LISP language is the source language itself which specifies in what way the S-expressions are to be processed. Third, LISP can interpret and execute programs written in the form of S-expressions. Thus, like machine language, and unlike most other high level languages, it can be used to generate programs for further executions.

A presentation of the central and basic concepts, techniques, and tools of computer science, with the emphasis on presenting a problem-solving approach and on providing a survey of all of the most important topics covered in degree programmes. Scheme is used throughout as the programming language and the author stresses a functional programming approach to create simple functions so as to obtain the desired programming goal. Such simple functions are easily tested individually, which greatly helps in producing programs that work correctly first time. Throughout, the author aids to writing programs, and makes liberal use of boxes with "Mistakes to Avoid." Programming examples include: * abstracting a problem; * creating pseudo code as an intermediate solution; * top-down and bottom-up design; * building procedural and data abstractions; * writing progams in modules which are easily testable. Numerous exercises help readers test their understanding of the material and develop ideas in greater depth, making this an ideal first course for all students coming to computer science for the first time.

* Treats LISP as a language for commercial applications, not a language for academic AI concerns. This could be considered to be a secondary text for the Lisp course that most schools teach . This would appeal to students who sat through a LISP course in college without quite getting it – so a "nostalgia" approach, as in "wow-lisp can be practical..." * Discusses the Lisp programming model and environment. Contains an introduction to the language and gives a thorough overview of all of Common Lisp’s main features. * Designed for experienced programmers no matter what languages they may be coming from and written for a modern audience—programmers who are familiar with languages like Java, Python, and Perl. * Includes several examples of working code that actually does something useful like Web programming and database access.

This practical, example-driven introduction teaches the foundations of the Mathematica language so it can be applied to solving concrete problems.