Educators, generals, dieticians, psychologists, and parents
program. Armies, students, and some societies are programmed. An
assault on large problems employs a succession of programs, most
of which spring into existence en route. These programs are rife
with issues that appear to be particular to the problem at hand.
To appreciate programming as an intellectual activity in its own
right you must turn to computer programming; you must read and
write computer programs -- many of them. It doesn't matter much
what the programs are about or what applications they serve.
What does matter is how well they perform and how smoothly they
fit with other programs in the creation of still greater
programs. The programmer must seek both perfection of part and
adequacy of collection. In this book the use of ``program'' is
focused on the creation, execution, and study of programs
written in a dialect of Lisp for execution on a digital
computer. Using Lisp we restrict or limit not what we may
program, but only the notation f