
Land of Lisp is finally out...and has a music video. - drcode
http://landoflisp.com
======
drcode
Hi HNers- I'm Conrad (aka drcode) the author of said book. Thanks guys for
helping build the buzz around LOL! (I should also thank pg for getting me into
this stuff in the first place.)

I'll be lurking in this thread today and tomorrow... feel free to post any
questions about the book or about Lisp in general and I will answer them.

Here's the only coupon code currently for the book. I'm posting it exclusively
on HN and proggit: 76738380768586 (ASCII for LISPLUV :-)

It gives a 35% discount on the Book+eBook combo on the No Starch site
(<http://nostarch.com/lisp.htm>). It expires 11/3. (FYI- If you just want the
eBook, No Starch already has a 50% off sale right now across the board. If you
only want the print copy, Amazon has a heavily discounted price already, for
reasons that are mysterious to me. Oh, and if you've already pre-ordered, just
cancel and reorder to get the discount.)

~~~
speek
Congrats on the release. I'm excited to finish reading the book. I just
thought you should know, however, that there's a minor mistake (I think) in
some of the walkthrough stuff in the pdf. On page 56:

    
    
      >  (defun pudding-eater (person)
          (cond ((eq person 'henry) (setf *arch-enemy* 'stupid-lisp-alien) '(curse you lisp alien – you ate my pudding))
      	    ((eq person 'johnny) (setf *arch-enemy* 'useless-old-johnny) '(i hope you choked on my pudding johnny))
      	    (t '(why you eat my pudding stranger ?))))
    
      > (pudding-eater 'johnny)
      (I HOPE YOU CHOKED ON MY PUDDING JOHNNY)
    
      > *arch-enemy*
      JOHNNY
    

_arch-enemy_ at this time should hold the value 'useless-old-johnny, not
'johnny

~~~
drcode
Yes, you are right- You found the first errata!

At least the intent of the code is still clear.

------
pg
How fabulous. I smiled all the way through that video. There is something so
happy about exuberant, unrepentant nerdery.

------
shaunxcode
Hey, super stoked for this so I just went to check my amazon order history and
discovered my order was no longer there? So I checked my gmail account and in
my spam found:

"Hello from Amazon.com.

Due to a lack of availability from our suppliers, we will not be able to
obtain the following item(s) from your order:

Conrad Barski "Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time!"
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1593272006>

We've cancelled the item(s) and apologize for the inconvenience. We must also
apologize for the length of time it has taken us to reach this conclusion.
Until recently, we had still hoped to obtain these item(s) for you.

Your credit card will NOT BE CHARGED for this item because you only pay for
items when we ship them to you."

I am just bummed I did not notice sooner but glad I caught this thread so I
can re-order! SO excited - just wanted to give a heads up in case other people
were under the impression that they should be seeing it arrive on their
doorstep.

update: per the authors comment below I have used the promo code to order
directly from no starch so I can read the digital version while I wait for the
lovely physical copy.

~~~
drcode
Yes, you probably ordered early this year or late last year. Some pre-orders
were cancelled because of the delay of the book at that time- apologies. You
will see a reference to that in the music video on landoflisp.com.

Right now you can order on Amazon without difficulty.

------
fogus
This has set the bar very high for Lisp book marketing. I am stunned. My plans
for a Clojure Lucha libre exhibition look lame by comparison. I need a bowl of
parentheses to help me think.

~~~
drcode
Hi fogus -Sorry I couldn't make it to Clojure Conj... liked your slides.

My philosophy of marketing is that you need to do something different that no
one else has done before to attract attention. There wasn't a programming book
with a music video yet, so I exploited that fact :)

But of course, there's still plenty other ideas that could be used to market
other books/sites...

~~~
fogus
You're doing a great job. I can't wait to see what you come up with next. I
hope to see you at a future Captial Area Clojure UG
(<http://www.meetup.com/Cap-Clug/>). Do you think you would be up for
discussing the Clojure-bits (well, all and any bits are just as good too) of
your book one day?

~~~
drcode
Yeah, I was there last month- Will try to come again tomorrow.

Happy to talk about Lisp/Clojure anytime. (with a little notice)

------
gord
Conrad, absolutely loved your video. My 6yo will pore over your comic and Ill
no doubt see land-of-lisp refs crop up in his battle scenes.

This all got me thinking about developing interactive stories and the ideal
lisp game development environment...

I hear from people who want to create interactive books and lessons for iPad.
I recommend they prototype things in PowerPoint or Keynote first, then hire a
developer to turn it into a cocoa app or a HTML5 web app with webkit
animations. Its too hard.

If the ideal tool was a web app, you could develop games and interactive
lessons for iPad and other tablets directly on the device.

You'd want a DSL for standard slide/rotate/scale animations, and write code in
lisp for game logic. This would bypass expense of developing native cocoa apps
yet reach nice platforms.

Ideally you'd prototype quickly and be led gently into the best language. I
guess mobile is the primary computer for most young people, so would be ideal
to take a lisp environment to them.

------
djm
That video just made my day - awesome! Can't wait to get the book. I also
realised when browsing the Amazon page that the author is the same guy who
wrote 'casting spels' (<http://www.lisperati.com/casting.html>) which was also
great.

If your reading this Conrad do you mind me asking you about your art work?
It's, hands down, some of the best cartoon drawing I've seen on the web. I'd
love to know what tools you use to do the drawing and make the animations, and
what process you go through when developing them.

~~~
drcode
Seriously? Best cartoon drawing on the web? I doubt that :)

I used to do all the artwork in ink and then scan it. Now I do it all on my
iPad with SketchBook Pro (took me a while to figure out how to get decent
quality this way- At first, I didn't think decent drawing on an iPad was
possible)

The animation was all done by importing bitmap artwork into Toon Boom
animation. It's a cheesy Windows program (i.e. save your work every 30
minutes, or else...) but is feature rich.

~~~
djm
Thanks for the reply. I asked about what you are using because I have recently
tried doing some drawing with a Wacom graphics tablet and am having trouble (I
have one of the cheap ones where you draw on the tablet whilst watching the
screen - the disconnect between hand and eye makes it difficult).

I'll look at some of the things you mentioned and see about trying them.

(thanks again!)

~~~
drcode
Yeah, I found Wacom tablets to be no good for me, for the reason you describe.
The iPad is definitely a better drawing device, as long as you don't care
about pressure sensitivity.

(Hope they release a large-screen iPad soon :)

~~~
samatman
Not the same thing, but the Cintiq is a monitor you can draw on, which is
pressure sensitive and lets you use whatever desktop-grade software you want.
I enjoy your drawings and explanations quite a bit; you'd probably find a
Cintiq, even the smaller (awesome) one, to be the most natural drawing
experience a computer can currently give.

------
tianyicui
FYI, the Homebrew formula to install CLISP on Mac OS X is at
<http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/pull/2707>

If the formula works well, please comment there and suggest the authors accept
my pull request. (If not, I ll be very happy to help.)

~~~
sverrejoh
It depends on 'libiconv', which is not part of master.

~~~
tianyicui
Sorry, my bad. I added the keg-only dependency libiconv. Is it working for you
now?

------
Shooter
I'm excited to finally be getting the book...I just wish I had read comic
books as a kid so that I didn't have to struggle with picking up the proper
'comic reading flow' in my thirties ;-)

(BTW, Conrad, I think you meant to say 'geezer' instead of 'geyser' in the
comic adapted from your epilogue...?)

I'm hoping I can use the book to teach lisp to some junior high kids in a
disadvantaged youth program. Is it appropriate for that, or no?

~~~
drcode
Thanks- I think I accidentally used an old bitmap- That typo is fixed in the
book.

I'm not sure the book can really take someone from zero programming experience
and teach them Lisp- It assumes at least some programming background. It would
be fine for junior high kids if they already know a bit of programming, but I
suspect they may not.

------
brisance
The website totally convinced me. I'm buying the eBook now!

~~~
tremendo
Ditto. And it's so awesome to see the author's whimsy pay off so well, judging
by the overall response here.

------
lispm
The comic on the Land of Lisp page is so well done. Click on the blinking
words.

I'm speechless...

~~~
danpker
Clicking on them doesn't do anything for me (Safari), what do they do?

~~~
drcode
Anyone else with Safari having a problem? Please reply here so I know if a fix
is still needed.... Clicking on the "throbbing text" should pop up a window.

~~~
danpker
It's fixed for me now, it may have just been my net connection. The
descriptions are awesome!

------
mahmud
Holly shit!~

 _(piano solo)_

"balance weasels on a rake .."

Too funny .. :-P

Conrad, you're awesome!

------
charlief
Bought it, I can't wait. I'm trying get my colleagues to try lisp, but I
didn't have the marketing tools necessary to convince them Now i do, the music
video gives a lot of personification to world (land) of lisp, thank you!

------
bpeirce
Congratulations Conrad on finally getting the book out! I just got my copy
from the No Starch website and am reading the ebook now. On first blush the
layout looks awesome. I'm looking forward to digging into it.

Also, your video on landoflisp.com reminds me of the music video John
Carpenter produced with his band for Big Trouble in Little China (I mean that
as a compliment): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D03E9kUTTtQ>

~~~
drcode
Not sure I see the connection, but thanks :P

------
alexyoung
Are the comic and game examples inspired by _why? (also reminds me of
<http://learnyouahaskell.com/>)

~~~
drcode
I think my comics at lisperati.com predate all of these, clearly inferior,
rivals. (kidding- both are great)

------
83457
GTW? LOL! Seeing Hunt the Wumpus referenced brings back memories of my
TI-99/4A and makes this a must buy. This book reminds me of the
magazines/compilations I have with programs and games in TI-BASIC/Assembly
Language.

<http://nostarch.com/download/Lisp08.pdf>

------
TeMPOraL
Congratulations on the release! Music video and the comic (Continuation guild
reminds me of Arilou ships from StarControl II) are AWESOME and made my day.
I'm currently trying to get money for paper version of the book.

By the way, I've shown the music video and the comic to friends of mine, and
two of them actually got interested and started to ask questions about Lisp.
Their positive reaction makes me think that those materials could be good to
show to people to get them seriously interested in parenthesis-oriented-
programming ;).

------
brisance
I'm learning LISP through this book, and it's fun!

On p.42, when explaining the c*r functions, I found it easier to just read the
"sequence" right-to-left.

For example:

    
    
      (cadadr '((peas carrots tomatoes) (pork beef chicken) duck))
      BEEF
    

Read as "rest, first, rest, first" of the cons cells, where "a" means "first"
and "d" means "rest of the cons cell(s)".

Aside: I am now beginning to appreciate Clojure more. :P

------
brisance
I bought the print and eBook bundle and so far I'm really pleased with it. I'm
at Chapter 3 already and it's an easy read; the author explains things in
simple English that's very easy to follow. The illustrations help in
clarifying concepts and also serve up some humor that keeps things
interesting. Kudos!

------
nlavezzo
Hi Conrad - glad to see this available now - I saw your preview at the DC HN
Meetup. I love all the art!

~~~
mshafrir
Conrad, I also met you at the DC meetup. Congrats!

------
SeanDav
Looks like the "HN Effect" is making the site unavailable. Saw it briefly
earlier and looked great!

~~~
drcode
Nope- Just a random major outage at dreamhost- now fixed (hopefully)

------
defroost
I bought Land of Lisp as soon as I became aware of it. Every time I hear a
truck out front I think, its here. Looking forward to total Common Lisp
immersion. Thanks for all of your contributions past and present to the Lisp
community and of course for the book.

------
runevault
Been waiting for this book for a long time, glad to finally see it out.
Already bought my copy, will be downloading it tonight to start working
through it.

Congratulations on finally getting it out! :)

------
chewbranca
Thanks for creating this book! I just picked it up, and everything I've seen
so far from the website and the first chapter has been a blast so far. I'm
excited to dive into the rest.

------
johnclaus
If you'd like a video addendum, courtesy of @lisperati and @johnclaus (the
videographer), to this post <http://bit.ly/cjDWg5>

------
lobo_tuerto
Thank you for an excellent way to introduce such a powerful language (that
I've been longing to learn, I must add!)

Game programming + Lisp! That's some winning combo! :D

------
akaalias
I love this so much.

------
anactofgod
Nice, Conrad! I haven't tried to balance weasels on a rake in a while. I'm
looking forward to seeing how you did it. _SMILE_

------
timepilot
Thanks for writing this! I also enjoyed the same game code books as a kid -
looking forward to learning lisp.

------
lisper
When I got to the meowing cats in the music video I knew I had to have a copy
of the book. :-) Congrats!

------
paufernandez
Page 194: "Hey Buddy! Why don't you try to prove the correctness of this!" -
LoL

------
shiny
Sorry for the OT question, but what tools did you use to make that video?

~~~
drcode
<http://www.toonboom.com/products/toon-boom-studio/>

~~~
Keyframe
OT, but check out Digicel Flipbook if you're seriously interested in 2D
animation - <http://www.digicelinc.com/> it will make your life easier.

------
Bootvis
Am I the only one having problems downloading the ebook after purchasing?

~~~
drcode
It seems to be working fine for others right now- Please let me know at
lisperati@gmail.com if you continue to have problems.

~~~
Bootvis
It's seems to be fixed now and I could download the eBook after logging in to
NoStarch. Thanks for the book!

------
lispm
Probably the most fun computer book ever released.

Conrad, you are my hero!

------
karlzt
the video is a little annoying but the comic is amazing.

