Notes on Graham's ANSI Common Lisp

General Comments

For the most part, Graham's Lisp code is maintainable and portable. Function definitions are short and well-motivated. Exceptions are noted below.

However, there are a few areas where Graham's coding style should not be considered typical:

• Naming: Like Unix, Graham likes short names, often to the point of crypticness. See my notes on naming for a better way.
• Conditionals: Graham uses if rather than cond, even when using if leads to nested if's or embedded progn's.
• Loops: Graham avoids loop, because it is so easily misused and different from the functional programming style. Sometimes, however, loop is the clearest simplest way to write something.
• Preference for recursion over iteration, even if it might lead to code that causes stack overflows on very long lists.

Here are more detailed comments on particular chapters:

• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
  • A data-driven ray tracer
  • An object-oriented ray tracer
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Appendix A
• Appendix D