Reviews for The Little Schemer

1. Hard work but worth hanging in there

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, January 12th, 2010

   Some of the other reviews seem to miss the point. Despite the title this is NOT a tutorial in Scheme, it simply uses Scheme as a teaching language. What it is really doing is teaching recursion and some of the key principles of functional programming. It starts off gently but the last third in particular is mind bending and took me three runs at it to really grasp the points. But at the end of the book I still couldn't write a useful program in Scheme, that's not the book's purpose. So if you want to learn Scheme try the author's other book "How to Design Programs" (available online or in paper), it's a much more conventional, and less challenging book. This book is good and does what it sets out to do, but that's not to teach Scheme. If you want to understand functional programming read this book (and its sequel).

2. Like nothing else

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, September 12th, 2009

   This book is completly different it gives you content in question and answer format and shapes your mind while you are answering to those.

3. Good content but frustrating style

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2008

   I bought this book to supplement the excellent free books online e.g. SICP, Teach yourself Scheme in Fixnum Days, TSPLv3. It contains some excellent lessons in functional programming - The Commandments.
   
   Unfortunately you have to read through a silly childish conversational style between the master and the student. The points are well illustrated but it must be aimed at school children. I'm sure the three volumes 'The Little Schemer', 'The Seasoned Schemer' and 'The Reasoned Schemer' could have been rolled into one useful book, had the authors adopted a more traditional style.

4. Excellent tutorial...

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, August 12th, 2008

   This is an excellent tutorial - although don't buy it if you require a reference work.
   
   As for complaints that it is highly cryptic text: Well, I disagree - everything is clearly and logically presented and terms are introduced (yes - car, cdr, cons and lambda are all defined in the opening chapters). To say they are not seems to be evidence of at least one reviewer not paying attention!
   
   Perhaps the best aspect of this book is the way it trains your movement of thought through code in the recursive way needed to fully grok Scheme and other LISP like languages.

5. The poor Little Schemer

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, July 12th, 2008

   This poor exposé contains highly cryptic text from the outset. It makes the assumption that everyone understands the words used to program in Scheme.
   
   The author appears not to give thought to the probability that each student has different levels or aspects of understanding, and forgets that nobody knows everything about any one thing. "Lambda", "cons", "car" and "cdr" are some of the many words that he uses and assumes everyone should understand
   
   I highly recommend the book "Programming & Meta-programming in Scheme" to help explain the mathematics and vocabulary used in the Scheme language. I recommend this book especially to those that are perplexed by the text in The Little Schemer.