Vsevolod Domkin - Programming Algorithms in Lisp: Writing Efficient Programs with Examples in ANSI Common Lisp

Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the author in this book is available to readers on GitHub via the books product page, located at www.apress.com/9781484264270 . For more detailed information, please visit http://www.apress.com/source-code .

Im very thankful to those who helped me in the work on Programming Algorithms in Lisp by providing support, advice, corrections, and suggestions. First of all, many thanks to my wife, Ksenya, who encouraged me to work on it despite the time that was, in part, taken from my family duties. Micha phoe Herda contributed a very thorough and detail-oriented review that helped correct a couple of significant misunderstandings on my part and pushed me to add more code and explanations where they were lacking. He has also championed the idea of a separate repository with all the books code accompanied by a test suite and helped me in this undertaking.

I am very grateful to Dr. Robert Strandh who humbly volunteered his help as an editor of the initial chapters of the book to make it sound more native (as my English is far from perfect since Im not a native speaker) and point out the mistakes that I made. He and his wife, Kathleen, have contributed lots of improvements to more than half of the chapters, and I tried to follow their advice in the subsequent ones. Thanks to Rainer Joswig for commenting on the Lisp choices. Im also grateful to my father, Dr. Volodymyr Demkine, for reviewing and proofing the book. Thanks to @dzenicv on reddit who posted links to almost all of the chapters there, which triggered some helpful discussions. Thanks to @tom_mellior on Hacker News for pointing a serious deficiency in the explanation of Union-Find. Thanks to all those people who shared the links to the chapters and contributed their comments and attention.

This book started after teaching an intensive course on algorithms to working programmers in Kyiv, in spring 2016. It took more than 3 years to complete, and, meanwhile, I also did three iterations of the course. Its aim is to systematically explain how to write efficient programs and, also, the approaches and tools for determining why the program isnt efficient enough. In the process, it will teach you some Lisp and show in action the technics of algorithmic development. And, even if you wont program in Lisp afterward, youll still be able to utilize the same approaches and tools or be inclined to ask why they arent available in your language of choice from its authors. :)

In the book, Ill address, primarily, the second issue but will also try to touch on the first whenever possible.

Besides, learning the art of solving difficult algorithmic problems trains the brain and makes it more apt to solving various other problems, in the course of your day-to-day work.

Finally, you will be speaking the same lingua franca as other advanced programmersthe tongue that transcends the mundane differences of particular programming languages. And youll gain a more detached view of those differences, freeing your mind from the dictate of a particular set of choices exhibiting in any one of them.