PAIP
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
 
Peter Norvig's book
Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence
Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp (usually shortened to
just "PAIP") has got to be one of the best programming
books (in any programming language) ever. It's well written, the code is interesting to read and
learn from and he covers a range of AI and non-AI programming
topics in it. He starts off the book with a general introduction to Lisp, followed
by implementations of a number of classic early AI programs (GPS, ELIZA, STUDENT, a
cut-down MACSYMA). He then gets into Tools & Techniques, covering
memoization, compilers, coding efficiency, logic programming & Prolog,
OO & CLOS, and
Knowledge Representation/Reasoning. The book then moves into some
advanced AI areas (symbolic math, expert systems, constraint-based
programming, games, natural language processing). Finally, in the last section of
the book, Norvig implements a Scheme interpreter and compiler in CL
and covers a number of other areas of CL not covered previously. Although this book's title might make you think it's only relevant if you're interested in Artificial Intelligence, it doesn't really matter whether you're interested in AI or not, this book is just a fantastic resource for learning how to program in CL. In fact, Peter acknowledges this dual focus when he identifies 4 separate paths through the book, depending on your interests:
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