The Little Schemer
The Little Schemer by Friedman and Felleisenby Friedman and Felleisen
Hacker ApprovedRanked 12 of 115 programming books by recommenders
People recommend it as a short, dialogue-driven way to learn recursion and think in Scheme, with the lambda calculus side of functional programming clicking into place for some readers.
People recommend it as a short, dialogue-driven way to learn recursion and think in Scheme, with the lambda calculus side of functional programming clicking into place for some readers.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
Other programming books people recommend
The four most recommended other programming books, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crafting Interpretersby Robert Nystrom | 60 | 4 | 94% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Clean Codeby Robert C. Martin | 31 | 87 | 26% | 9 | — | — |
| The Pragmatic Programmerby Hunt and Thomas | 28 | 1 | 97% | 7 | — | Approved |
| How to Design Programsby Felleisen, Findler, Flatt and Krishnamurthi | 18 | 2 | 90% | 7 | — | Approved |
| The Little Schemerby Friedman and FelleisenThis page | 10 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | Approved |
What people said
9 of the 11 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Little Schemer - which, I used to recommend to every engineer that answered to me”
“I have seen elegant code in: SICP, The Little Schemer, Software Design for Flexibility.”
“it helped me grokk the more lambda calculus aspect of FP more than anything”
“I struggled with The Little Lisper (as it was called at the time) in school but as I approach the other end of my career I've given some thought to working through it again.”
“teaching you to "think Scheme" is exactly what those books do”
“She can play along on the computer by installing mit-scheme and placing the snippet below”
“I have fond memories too, we used to follow "The little Schemer" for Scheme”
“making my way through The Little Schemer as a replacement for advent of code”
“What an impressive little book it is!”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.