The Open Source Zone

I purchased this book specifically with a view to learning the Scheme language. The text is easy to read, is pithy and to the point, and generally makes concepts clear and easy to understand. There are however, in my opinion, some sections where the author forgets that concepts are new to the reader and the examples that are used tend to obfuscate the point being made rather than elucidating it.

I have never considered myself stupid, but after my 5th reading of the introduction to continuations I was beginning to worry. A quick reading of another text on the subject cleared up my concerns almost immediately which suggests to me that the explanations are not as clear as they could be. There are some other areas of the book where this sort of assumption makes grasping a new concept more difficult than it should be.

Nonetheless, I still consider this a good introduction to the Scheme language and would gladly recommend it to the aspirant Schemer.

I'm a fan of a lot of the popular Scheme or Scheme related books (SICP, The Little Schemer, The Seasoned Schemer). While in some sense this book takes a more pragmatic approach than the aforementioned books, it is no less valuable. I found this book helpful as a teaching aid while learning Scheme, and as a reference for my continued use of the language.

Advanced topics, such as continuations and the syntax-rules and syntax-case macro systems, get good treatment from this book.

Highly recommended.

Very good book for learning. You can follow many examples with a running Scheme interpreter; I recommend it as a must.

Good book. To the point. Doesn't waste time with fluffy words. Excellent. I learned Scheme in a few days from this book. Scheme is like C on steroids. I like C, I hate C++ and Java. Calculus is entirely about functions, not objects. And I don't see people saying oh, Calculus is weak because it isn't object oriented. BLECH. Teach me to fish, don't give me one.

As I said in a past review to the second edition, this book is wonderful. This book has convinced me to migrate from Common Lisp to Scheme. This is a serious book for the one that really wants to learn about Scheme and require careful study and a strong motivation. Please note: if you are really interested to learn Scheme, then this book is for you; if you are not really interested and/or you like to joke, this book is absolutely not for you. The book is accurate, complete, well written and cover all you need about the modern Scheme. I use Scheme for personal study about bioinformatics. Thanks to the Autor.