Subject: Re: FAQ: How do I alter CLTL2 to note ANSI changes? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1998/12/03 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3121646806536281@naggum.no> * "Christopher R. Barry" <cbarry@2xtreme.net> -> David Steuber | The Hyperspec is great, but Steele's examples are really nice. How much | of CLOS have you learned David solely by reading the Hyperspec? well, I didn't "get" much out of the chapter on CLOS in CLtL2 on first pass -- I actually found the whole of CLOS to be hopelessly muddled and over-generalized. after I had quickly read Keene's tutorial and read the HyperSpec, however, it all made sense and became readable. I'd say Keene got me past all the obstacles, and the HyperSpec taught me the details. Chapter 28 in CLtL2 is quite nice after you already know how things work. | It's very difficult to use the Hyperspec as a tutorial, I disagree. but then again, I tend to learn better from standards and specifications than from "tutorials". I positively hate books by authors who attempt to assume to know¹ how much I understand at any given point. however, there's something to be said for logical order of presentation, which is not at all the same as a _supposedly_ "pedagogical" order of presentation, which assumes way too much knowledge about the reader. | Steele uses a touch of humor in his style... yup, and the best part is that all the great names of the examples are so much easy to remember than the subject covered, but the index actually caters to that, too, and has a wonderful sense of humor of its own: Michaelangelo (turle), 440 Michelangelo (artist), 1475-1564 I especially found the index entry on "kludges" riotiously funny. #:Erik ------- ¹ the futility of the undertaking should be indicated by the weak wording -- The Microsoft Dating Program -- where do you want to crash tonight?