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Ask HN: Is SICP/HtDP still worth reading in 2023? Any alternatives?

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Re: Ask HN: Is SICP/HtDP still worth reading in 2023? Any alternatives?

#71

Post by JohnFen »

krapp wrote: post #62
teh_klev wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In good writing you should ideally use the full name of the thing you're going to abbreviate with the acronym in parenthesis after the initial "expanded" version. e.g. "My article is about How to Design Programs (HtDP)..." Then later the article: "In the HtDP book it mentions...." This makes life easier for those less familiar with the subject matter.

This is a technical forum, it's reasonable to expect readers who discuss a thread about a specific subject of interest to be familiar with the common vernacular and idioms related to that subject. If you can't understand the initialisms, maybe that's a sign that particular thread isn't for you, and that you likely have little of value to add.

I've read and understood them both but didn't recognize them from the initials. In another comment here, someone said

> TAoCP (er, Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming")

I also would not have recognized TAoCP as referring to the Knuth book. Not all corners of the tech world commonly refer to tech books by their initials. That doesn't mean they have nothing useful to say about them.

Re: Ask HN: Is SICP/HtDP still worth reading in 2023? Any alternatives?

#72

Post by nickpsecurity »

retrocryptid wrote: post #46

Meh. Python is for scientists. Lisp is for engineers. Which is to say the languages were designed for different language design methodologies. In the old days of Lisp we didn't have large libraries of pre-existing functionality, so it was important for programmers to know how to construct complex functions from simple functions. But now we have python with its expansive partially documented standard and semi-standard…

“Python is for scientists. Lisp is for engineers.”

Then what does that make Hy language?

https://hylang.org/

Re Languages with lots of example code and LLM’s

With translators or things like Hy lang, one could get the LLM’s to solve your problem in Python before converting it to another form. Then, you just need a translator. If lacking one, it’s easy to translate by hand.

The practicality of this concept will probably vary by use case. My experiments had GPT doing sketching, implementations, boilerplate, and even porting Python to Rust. A legally-clear LLM trained on multiple languages could probably be fine-tuned to do Python to LISP conversions. If not, Hy might be a stepping stone, too.

Re: Ask HN: Is SICP/HtDP still worth reading in 2023? Any alternatives?

#73

Post by Agingcoder »

Edit: I’m essentially self taught as well, apart from one class about algorithms.

To a large extent, reading books about old tech is still interesting- you’ll just have a better appreciation of what you have now, how it came to be, and what was explored before. It will also show you a simpler version of what you have now, so easier to understand: reading the manual of the 6502 or i386 is not the same thing ( a single readable text file ) as the many manuals of the latest Intel CPUs, totaling thousands of pages !

I grew up reading manuals of old computers, old computer magazines, books about random tech ( from expert systems to system programming in pascal, prolog, etc ) because my father would buy random books. I’ve never regretted doing so, it just gave me a broader overview of what was possible.

In any case, sicp is great, just read it.

Re: Ask HN: Is SICP/HtDP still worth reading in 2023? Any alternatives?

#74

Post by teh_klev »

JohnFen wrote: post #71
krapp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a technical forum, it's reasonable to expect readers who discuss a thread about a specific subject of interest to be familiar with the common vernacular and idioms related to that subject. If you can't understand the initialisms, maybe that's a sign that particular thread isn't for you, and that you likely have little of value to add.

I've read and understood them both but didn't recognize them from the initials. In another comment here, someone said > TAoCP (er, Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming") I also would not have recognized TAoCP as referring to the Knuth book. Not all corners of the tech world commonly refer to tech books by their initials. That doesn't mean they have nothing useful to say about them.

I agree. This is another acronym I struggle to recognise when I see it despite being reasonably familiar with the first three volumes since my high school and college days back in the 80's.

Re: Ask HN: Is SICP/HtDP still worth reading in 2023? Any alternatives?

#75

Post by pistolpete333 »

Working through the original SICP (including doing ALL of the exercises!) had the largest tangible positive effect on my ability to code as someone who has a CS degree. After finishing I felt much more confident as a programmer.

I’m mainly a TS/JS node and react dev and found much of what I learned from SICP translated into a deep understanding of both, especially with regards to higher order functions, closures, state management/hooks in react etc. The subtler aspects of coding (at least in JS/TS but also generally) all kind of just started to make sense.

Would definitely recommend

Re: Ask HN: Is SICP/HtDP still worth reading in 2023? Any alternatives?

#76

Post by db48x »

joaogui1 wrote: post #61
db48x wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did geometry become irrelevant once we stopped caring about field boundaries along the flooding river Nile?

I think the real comparison is "has the proportion of the population that needs to know how to take care of farm animals gone down?"

I don’t really think so. If you decide to become a farmer, then care of farm animals may be very relevant to you. Similarly, if you decide to become a software engineer or computer scientist then SICP is very relevant to you.

Not everyone uses geometry every day, but engineers do. And we all depend on engineers, so the understanding of geometry is a fundamental underpinning of our entire society. The same can be said of computer science. We don’t all program for a living, but the structure and interpretation of computer programs (the literal structure and interpretation, not the book) is becoming an ever larger factor in how our society functions.

Re: Ask HN: Is SICP/HtDP still worth reading in 2023? Any alternatives?

#78

Post by bmitc »

7thaccount wrote: post #26
f1shy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that. Now precisely because multicore is the only path to follow when we reach the end of the Moore’s law, we need more than ever functional programming. Is no coincidence that there are so much new languages that are trying to use those concepts, including a big revival of Lisp.

There's a big revival of lisp?

Erlang and especially Elixir with macros are not too far off of Lisp and are two of the more popular functional languages.

Re: Ask HN: Is SICP/HtDP still worth reading in 2023? Any alternatives?

#79

Post by bmitc »

jstx1 wrote: post #41
tobinfricke wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if to prove your point, those video lectures are from 1986 . I took the course in 1999. And yes the material is just as relevant today.

Not necessarily as relevant, programming has changed a lot since SICP came out. Sussman says so himself - https://youtu.be/OgRFOjVzvm0

I would wager that Sussman is being friendly and diplomatic towards his department here. I think the move away from SICP was primarily due to Sussman and Abelson tiring of teaching the course, which I believe Sussman says here or in another talk, changing tides in the landscape of universities and their relation to the job market, and a departmental political move. The move to Python was probably as much of a marketing choice and personal choice based upon leadership in the department than anything. There's an MIT professor, John Guttag, that wrote the Python book that they use and that's used in MIT's MITx and edX courses. I doubt he just wrote it and then the department just happened to later switch to Python and adopt the book.

I think Sussman's answer is more of an observation of the result of the switch and not an explanation why. MIT is a slave to fundraising, and I suspect the industry trends of programming languages, funding sources, job market, and other marketing and political decisions led to the change over anything actually technical.

Re: Ask HN: Is SICP/HtDP still worth reading in 2023? Any alternatives?

#80

Post by bmitc »

scns wrote: post #20
bmitc wrote: post #4

The concepts in SICP are timeless. There's nothing to be lost going through that book. There are video lectures you can use to accompany the book: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE18841CABEA24090 Also, I highly recommend the courses How to Code: Simple Data amd How to Code: Complex Data on edX that are based on HtDP.

Second that recommendation. Kiczales is a great teacher, IMHO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Kiczales?wprov=sfla1

Yea, he is! And he helped write the book on CLOS and the metaobject protocol.
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