Some great reference books do a good job of also being an introduction to complex parts. This book is just a good reference book. ( )

There was a time in my life when I loved the Scheme programming language more than any other language. Every chance I would get, I would write my programs in Scheme.

Granted, this was before I met the amazing Perl, who in turn got me back into the language pool, and from there I managed to meet others. But before that, if it couldn't be written in Scheme, it probably shouldn't be written in the first place. And since a Scheme interpreter can be written in Scheme, there's really no limitation as to what it can do. Right?

The Scheme Programming language, by R. Kent Dybvig is a wonderful overview of the language as a whole, explaining everything in very clear yet terse terms. It's like the owner's manual for the language, and should come with every copy (or every copy of it should come with Scheme, since the Scheme interpreter is free to download and install).

The only downside to the book (and I'm just speaking for myself) is that no matter how many times I read it or work it out, I just can't get my brain around the call-with-current-continutation function. It's not Dybvig's fault, really. It's just like every time I try to understand it, my brain runs from the room, hands over its ears, screaming "LA LA LA LA."

Still nothing.

But again, that's me, and not Dybvig.

Everything else I understood completely.

If you would like to learn a Lisp-y language, and would like it to be powerful and flexible, then I definitely recommend picking up TSPL3E, or TSPLXE where X is the latest E. ( )