Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP • Hacker News Board

Re: Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP

#161

Post by jim-greer » Thu, May 05, 2016, 12:50 AM UTC

lisper wrote: post #127

gizmo385 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The field has exploded. It's becoming more and more difficult to take vertical slices of every sub-field. What should we consider fundamental? Programming languages, automata theory, set theory, compilers, assembly language programming, microprocessors and system architecture, algorithms, graph theory, category theory, artificial intelligence, machine learning, operating system, parallel and distributed p…

> What should we consider fundamental? A fair question, and a full answer would be too long for a comment (though it would fit in a blog post, which I'll go ahead and write now since this seems to be an issue). But I'll take a whack at the TL;DR version here. AI, ML, and NLP and web design are application areas, not fundamentals. (You didn't list computer graphics, computer vision, robotics, embedded systems -- all a…

I'm of two minds about this. Everything you mention is great background to have. (Though non-trivial programs can't be reasoned about mathematically much more than biological systems can).

I think this deep background is a great goal. But in another way programming is a craft. You can learn as you go. There are millions of bright people who could do useful, quality work without an MIT-level CS education. They just need some guidance, structure, and encouragement.

Re: Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP

#162

Post by quicklyfrozen » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:03 AM UTC

lisper wrote: post #46

mindcrime wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ecosystem is thus becoming infested by horrible hacks which kinda-sorta work, and which everyone uses, because they kinda sorta work, and there is nothing else. Yes, but the reason it has changed for everyone is that no one understands the fundamentals any more, because they aren't being taught to anyone. I mostly agree with both of these statements, but with a slight twist. To some extent, I feel like the reason…

> no one has time to learn everything Nonsense. The fundamentals don't take a long time to learn. And once you know them, everything else becomes much easier to learn. That's the reason that learning the fundamentals matters: it's a huge lever. Here's a single, small, very accessible book that takes you all the way from switches to CPUs: http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softwa... SICP gets you fr…

I bought this book for my son who will be starting a CS program in the fall. He seems to have enjoyed it, and I'm hopeful it will give him a good grasp of the fundamentals that you might miss by starting out with Java.

Re: Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP

#163

Post by sokoloff » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:24 AM UTC

mattlong wrote: post #23

I really wish SICP had been a 2nd year course (with a requisite increase in difficulty) instead of my very first course in the EECS department. Not having had a ton of background in programming beforehand, I feel that a lot of what SICP has to offer was lost on me to some degree due my not appreciating it at the time. I suppose the same could probably be said for any intro course or just college in general...

I was in the opposite situation. I'd been programming (mostly self-taught) for so long in imperative languages that I really struggled with 6.001, ultimately dropping the course. (I was course 2 taking .001 for "fun".)

Re: Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP

#164

Post by sokoloff » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:27 AM UTC

vu3rdd wrote: post #156

I wish the original course is offered in an alternate platform like edX.

The course material from 2005 (original 6.001) is available on OCW at MIT, including videos of the lectures.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...

That's an older and less polished online courseware system than edX, but it's perfectly workable. There are also VERY old videos of Sussman himself giving the .001 lectures. Those were easy to find, but I'd recommend the OCW site over the original lectures.

Re: Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP

#165

Post by quicklyfrozen » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:34 AM UTC

jdmoreira wrote: post #57

Reading this made me so so sad, I do agree with the reasoning. I learned to program on a course that follows SICP, I spent all my college years learning how to program from first principles, building all the pieces from scratch. Building compilers, soft threads implementations, graph parsing algorithms... and I was happy with that way of programming! Today I'm an iOS developer, I spend most of my day 'poking' at the…

And to make this really annoying, you still need to know low-level algorithms and data structures to make it through most interview processes. What they should really do is give you a crappy API doc and have you make it do something useful.

Re: Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP

#166

Post by jeffreyrogers » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:36 AM UTC

ccalf wrote: post #110

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #67

I read about half of SICP and thought it was OK. Not great, but okay. The programmers I've met fall largely into two groups, those who like systems level programming, knowing how the OS works, how it interfaces with the hardware, what the memory layout is like, etc. and those who like abstraction and the things that SICP values. I'm definitely in the former group (but I certainly appreciate people who prefer the SICP…

SICP is programming for the theoretically inclined. It seems analogous to calculus in math versus calculus for physics: you can study it more formally with all the proper proofs and derivations (and bizarre cases), or pick up just the applied bits (such as chain rule and dot notation) that you need for doing AP physics. This analogy suggests the existence of two approaches, with different implications and consequence…

I think that is true to some extent, but Knuth's approach (which I'm more drawn to) is also theoretically inclined, albeit of a different approach than SICP. Knuth (and myself) see programming as fundamentally being about computers, and Knuth starts with what a computer can do and builds from there. Ableson and Sussman see programming as more about computation, so they start with a model of computation (based on scheme, lambda calculus, etc.). These two approaches are quite different and I don't think you can reconcile them easily. Not that either one is all that much better than the other, though Knuth's is certainly more efficient. It seems to me that a large part of which you favor comes down to how you're wired.

Re: Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP

#167

Post by mavelikara » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:40 AM UTC

yarou wrote: post #26

mavelikara wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For working as a professional programmer, SICP, sure. But TAOCP? Why?

I wrote that for anyone interested in learning CS seriously, I swear by those two books. I would recommend an entirely different set of books for someone who wants to work as a professional programmer. That being said, TAOCP really gave me a clear understanding of algorithmic analysis. It's a hard book, but after you finish it, you won't look at programming the same way again. Especially when it comes to design decis…

Thanks for clarifying! Please post a list of books you will recommend for professional programmers.

Re: Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP

#168

Post by thorrr » Thu, May 05, 2016, 2:00 AM UTC

mattlong wrote: post #23

I really wish SICP had been a 2nd year course (with a requisite increase in difficulty) instead of my very first course in the EECS department. Not having had a ton of background in programming beforehand, I feel that a lot of what SICP has to offer was lost on me to some degree due my not appreciating it at the time. I suppose the same could probably be said for any intro course or just college in general...

I took 6.001 in the late nineties and hated it/did very poorly. I found it waaaaaay too difficult as a freshman. Oddly, doing a bunch of C++ and Java in high school made it even more difficult. Biggest problems:

1. the programming environment (an emacs clone in scheme) had an extraordinarily steep learning curve 2. S-expresssions were hugely difficult to visually parse and edit vs. languages with more familiar syntax. 3. very little exposure to practical projects in the class - felt like constantly working on toy projects or impractical abstract constructions

I got a lot more out of 6.170 (software engineering lab) and the other computer science classes.

I have a much greater appreciation for the class now after 15+ years and recently worked through SICP again. It's much easier with more programming experience, not to mention Emacs paredit mode.

I always thought 6.001 should have been a 2nd or 3rd year course. I would have gotten a lot more out of it.

Re: Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP

#169

Post by ktRolster » Thu, May 05, 2016, 2:20 AM UTC

gizmo385 wrote: post #100

lisper wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even 4 whole years isn't enough to learn "all the fundamentals" No. You are missing the point. The fundamentals are very simple and easy to learn. That's what makes them "fundamental." It's all the random shit invented by people who didn't understand the fundamentals (or chose not to apply them) that takes a long time to learn.

I disagree. The field has exploded. It's becoming more and more difficult to take vertical slices of every sub-field. What should we consider fundamental? Programming languages, automata theory, set theory, compilers, assembly language programming, microprocessors and system architecture, algorithms, graph theory, category theory, artificial intelligence, machine learning, operating system, parallel and distributed p…

I don't know about your university, but mine at least some coverage of all those categories.

At a minimum an education should give you a strong enough base that you can teach yourself those other things should you so desire.

Re: Programming by poking: why MIT stopped teaching SICP

#170

Post by ktRolster » Thu, May 05, 2016, 2:21 AM UTC

lisper wrote: post #127

gizmo385 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The field has exploded. It's becoming more and more difficult to take vertical slices of every sub-field. What should we consider fundamental? Programming languages, automata theory, set theory, compilers, assembly language programming, microprocessors and system architecture, algorithms, graph theory, category theory, artificial intelligence, machine learning, operating system, parallel and distributed p…

> What should we consider fundamental? A fair question, and a full answer would be too long for a comment (though it would fit in a blog post, which I'll go ahead and write now since this seems to be an issue). But I'll take a whack at the TL;DR version here. AI, ML, and NLP and web design are application areas, not fundamentals. (You didn't list computer graphics, computer vision, robotics, embedded systems -- all a…

>What you do need is some amount of time spent on the idea that computer programs are mathematical objects which can be reasoned about mathematically.

Yes please.