For everything there is a season.. Ecclesiastes 3:1

I wanted to buy a laptop and the 15” Apple PowerBook seemed to be the right one for me. I don't need a windows machine since most of development/ study is in Java & Lisp which work well on any operating system. The Apple also has very good support for the kind of multimedia stuff I try once in a while like editing home videos, flash animation, etc. I must add that I couldn't resist the light laptop with such great looks (hardware and software). But just before I was about to buy it I got a new software contract that had to be developed (compiled) using Visual Studio :P!!

Since Visual Studio is not available for Apple, I thought I would go for a Windows based laptop now and soon (in 10 months time) go for a PowerBook. Hence I decided to get a cheap one now and save the money to buy the PowerBook later.

Since laptops are very expensive in India (almost twice the US price) and a lot of developers keep traveling between India and US, I decided to get it from the US. It was in March that I bought a Compaq laptop online and shipped it to a friend of mine in the US who was supposed to come to India after his short stint there by mid March. Soon after the laptop reached him, his stay was extended! I thought worst case; I will have to wait till April when his visa expires. But his trip had to be extended and he got his visa also extended!! Now I had to find another person to bring it. Finally his wife was planning to come back and I requested her to carry it with her. She somehow agreed. While I was eagerly waiting, her company asked her to stay back as a substitute (anybody can substitute anyone else in software service segment since they are just heads to count) since one of her team members who was supposed to go there to work on the project had some visa problems. I waited...

Then last month I met an old colleague of mine who was about to leave for the US for a very short visit. He was planning to return by the first week of June. I was delighted when he agreed to bring the laptop with him for me (BTW even though I say US, all of them go to the bay area, California). I got another friend of mine in Santa Clara to get the laptop from my friend in Santa Rosa and give it to this person in Santa Clara. After a long wait of 3 months, I got the laptop. The only small problem I had was that he thought that I only required the laptop. SO he left all the installation CDs, warranty and manuals there. Now I will have to ask someone else to bring them. To add more pain, there was some problem with my USB drives and I had to reinstall the operating system! Thankfully there was a sticker under the laptop with the product key for the Windows XP installation and I used a friends Compaq installation CD. I am using some downloaded drivers from the Compaq site to keep it going till I get the CDs.

Thus today more than 3 months after I paid for the laptop, I am able to use it. For the same price that I paid for this laptop (Intel Centrino, 15.4” TFT Wide screen, 512 MB RAM, 32 MB VRAM ATI Mobility Radeon, 80 GB HDD, DVD combo drive and flash card slots) now you get one with 64 MB VRAM and a DVD writer!! That is even before I could lay my hands on the laptop :P

To make things worse, a couple of days back my charger blew up (maybe due to a power surge or so) and I still have not got my warranty papers! Thankfully I did not have to pay (Rs. 3,500/-) for the replacement since the HP service center engineer found out that my laptop had a valid international warranty, through their website. phew!

Being a Lisper

As I had mentioned earlier I wanted to learn Lisp and had started with the online ELM-ART Lisp Course. It was a very good place to start. Half way through it I also started with the Little Schemer. The book alongwith the online course was very helpful. But both the book and the course deals only with the very basics of Lisp. By the end of the sixth lesson of the online course you will be able to write complex recursive functions but nothing more. To learn about Lisp macros you will have to try out some other books.

The OnLisp book (freely available online) by Paul Graham is a good for someone who wants to learn how to use macros in Lisp - the real power of Lisp. One of the reasons why I like this book is because it primarily deals with what you can do with Lisp that you cannot do with other languages.


I think it might take me a month or two to get a basic understanding of macros. Maybe I could try some Lisp based components with interfaces to other popular languages then :)!

Recently while reading a thread in Joel Spolsky's forums, I found a recommendation that it is better to go through:-

1. ANSI Common Lisp by Paul Graham


2. On Lisp by Paul Graham


3. Object-Oriented Programming in Common Lisp: A Programmer's Guide to CLOS by Sonya E. Keene


4. Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp by Peter Norvig

See more links to lisp educational resources here