Racket is a descendant of Lisp, a programming language renowned for its elegance, power, and challenging learning curve. But while Racket retains the functional goodness of Lisp, it was designed with beginning programmers in mind. Realm of Racket is your introduction to the Racket language.
In Realm of Racket, you'll learn to program by creating increasingly complex games. Your journey begins with the Guess My Number game and coverage of some basic Racket etiquette. Next you'll dig into syntax and semantics, lists, structures, and conditionals, and learn to work with recursion and the GUI as you build the Robot Snake game. After that it's on to lambda and mutant structs (and an Orc Battle), and fancy loops and the Dice of Doom. Finally, you'll explore laziness, AI, distributed games, and the Hungry Henry game.
As you progress through the games, chapter checkpoints and challenges help reinforce what you've learned. Offbeat comics keep things fun along the way.
As you travel through the Racket realm, you'll:
• Master the quirks of Racket's syntax and semantics
• Learn to write concise and elegant functional programs
• Create a graphical user interface using the 2htdp/image library
• Create a server to handle true multiplayer games
Realm of Racket is a lighthearted guide to some serious programming. Read it to see why Racketeers have so much fun!
Author(s): Matthias Felleisen, David Van Horn, Conrad Barski, Forrest Bice, Rose DeMaio, Spencer Florence, Feng-Yun Mimi Lin, Scott Lindeman, Nicole Nussbaum, Eric Peterson, Ryan Plessner
Edition: 1
Publisher: No Starch Press
Year: 2013
Language: English
Commentary: Vector PDF
Pages: 320
City: San Francisco, CA
Tags: Programming; Lisp; Elementary; Racket
Preface: Hello World
Why Would I Want to Learn About Racket?
Who Should Read this Book?
What Teaching Approach Is Used?
Can I Skip Chapters?
Anything Else I Should Know?
Introduction: Open Paren
(.1 What Makes Lisp So Cool and Unusual?
(.2 Where Did Lisp Come From?
(.3 What Does Lisp Look Like?
(.4 Where Does Racket Come From?
(.5 What Is This Book About?
Halt—Chapter Checkpoint
Chapter 1: Getting Started
1.1 Readying Racket
1.2 Interacting with Racket
Raise—Chapter Checkpoint
Chapter 2: A First Racket Program
2.1 The Guess My Number Game
2.2 Defining Variables
2.3 Basic Racket Etiquette
2.4 Defining Functions in Racket
A Function for Guessing
Functions for Closing In
The Main Function
Resume—Chapter Checkpoint
Chapter 3: Basics of Racket
3.1 Syntax and Semantics
3.2 The Building Blocks of Racket Syntax
3.3 The Building Blocks of Racket Semantics
Booleans
Symbols
Numbers
Strings
3.4 Lists in Racket
CONS Cells
Functions for CONS Cells
Lists and List Functions
The CONS Function
The LIST Function
The FIRST and REST Functions
Nested Lists
3.5 Structures in Racket
Structure Basics
Nesting Structures
Structure Transparency
Interrupt—Chapter Checkpoint
Chapter 4: Conditions and Decisions
4.1 How to Ask
4.2 The Conditionals: IF and Beyond
One Thing at a Time with IF
The Special Form that Does It All: COND
A First Taste of Recursion
4.3 Cool Tricks with Conditionals
Using the Stealth Conditionals AND and OR
Using Functions that Return More than Just the Truth
4.4 Equality Predicates, Once More
4.5 Comparing and Testing
Writing a Test
What Is Not a Test
Testing in the Real World
More Testing Facilities
Call-with-current-continuation—Chapter Checkpoint
Chapter 4½: define define 'define
4½.1 Module-Level Definitions
Variable Definitions
Function Definitions
4½.2 Local Definitions
Abort—Chapter Checkpoint
Chapter 5: big-bang
5.1 Graphical User Interface
5.2 Landing a UFO
5.3 Using big-bang: Syntax and Semantics
5.4 Guessing Gooey
The Data
The Main Function
Key-Events
Rendering
Time to Stop
Exit—Chapter Checkpoint
Chapter Challenges
Chapter 6: Recursion Is Easy
6.1 Robot Snake
6.2 A Data Representation for the Snake Game
6.3 The Main Function
6.4 Clock Ticks
Eating and Growing
Slithering
Rotting Goo
6.5 Key-Events
6.6 Rendering
6.7 End Game
6.8 Auxiliary Functions
Return—Chapter Checkpoint
Chapter Challenges
Chapter 7: Land of Lambda
7.1 Functions as Values
7.2 Lambda
7.3 Higher-Order Fun
7.4 Two More Higher-Order Functions
7.5 Derive This!
7.6 apply
Break—Chapter Checkpoint
Chapter 8: Mutant Structs
8.1 Chad’s First Battle
8.2 Orc Battle
8.3 Setting Up the World, a First Step
8.4 Action: How Structs Really Work
8.5 More Actions, Setting Up the World for Good
8.6 Ready, Set, big-bang
8.7 Initializing the Orc World
8.8 Rendering the Orc World
8.9 The End of the World
8.10 Actions, A Final Look
Throw—Chapter Checkpoint
Chapter Challenges
Chapter 9: The Values of Loops
9.1 FOR Loops
9.2 Multiple Values
9.3 Back to FOR/FOLD
9.4 More on Loops
Waitpid—Chapter Checkpoint
Chapter 10: Dice of Doom
10.1 The Game Tree
10.2 Dice of Doom, The Game
10.3 Designing Dice of Doom: Take One
Filling in the Blanks
Simplifying the Rules
End of Game
Controlling the Game
10.4 How Game Trees Work
10.5 Game States and Game Trees for Dice of Doom
10.6 Roll the Dice
10.7 Rendering the Dice World
10.8 Input Handling
10.9 Creating a Game Tree
The Game Tree
Neighbors
Attacks
10.10 The End Game
Kill—Chapter Checkpoint
Chapter Challenges
Chapter 11: Power to the Lazy
11.1 Doomsday
11.2 Lazy Evaluation
11.3 Memoized Computations
11.4 Racket Can Be Lazy
Delay—Chapter Checkpoint
Chapter 12: Artificial Intelligence
12.1 An Intelligent Life-form
12.2 Lazy Evaluation
12.3 Adding Artificial Intelligence
Stop-when—Chapter Checkpoint
Chapter Challenges
Chapter 13: The World Is Not Enough
13.1 What Is a Distributed Game?
13.2 The Data
Messages
Previously Fabricated Structures
Packages
Bundles
Mail
iworld Structures
13.3 The Network Postal Service
13.4 Organizing Your Universe
13.5 Distributed Guess
The State of the Client and the State of the Server
The Server
The Client
Running the Game
Error—Chapter Checkpoint
Chapter Challenges
Chapter 14: Hungry Henry
14.1 King Henry the Hungry
14.2 Hungry Henry, the Game
14.3 Two United States
14.4 Henry’s Universe
Message Data and Structures
Complex Numbers Are Good Positions
A Day in the Life of a Server
A Day in the Life of a Client
14.5 State of the Union
State of Henry
State of the House
14.6 Main, Take Client
The Appetizer State
The Entree State
14.7 Main, Take Server
The Join State and Network Events
The Join State and Tick Events
The Play State and Network Events
The Play State and Tick Events
14.8 See Henry Run
On-disconnect—Chapter Checkpoint
Chapter Challenges
Good-Bye: Close Paren
).1 Run Racket Run
).2 Racket Is a Programming Language
).3 Racket Is a Metaprogramming Language
).4 Racket Is a Programming-Language Programming Language
So Long
Index
