Scheme and the Art of Programming

Scheme is the fast track to getting started in programming. Its clear semantics, simple syntax, and interactive environment enable the beginning student to write sophisticated programs after just two brief chapters. As a first introduction to programming, it is an ideal vehicle for learning to reason correctly about computation. Starting from a few fundamental concepts and principles - procedural and syntactic abstractions, recursion, iteration, state, and control - Springer and Friedman develop the ideas and techniques of programming. They include both traditional topics such as numeric and symbolic computation, and also cover current issues such as streams, object-oriented programming and continuations for abstracting control. The presentation is designed for the introductory college student It is more sophisticated and complete than "The Little LISPer, "but not as advanced as "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs." Springer and Freidman provide a solid introduction to data abstraction by presenting topics such as list strings, vectors, matrices, sets, relations, and functions. Among the examples used to illustrate object oriented programming are stacks, queues, circular lists, hash tables, and a gas station simulation. George Springer is Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science and Daniel P. Friedman is Professor of Computer Science. Both are at Indiana University, one of the centers for research and development of Scheme.