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Paul Graham on SICP (2000)

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Re: Paul Graham on SICP (2000)

#91

Post by divs1210 »

billsix wrote: post #60
taylodl wrote: post #2

I first read SICP after 25 years of professional development, and while I didn't learn anything new I did see things in a whole new light. I think it would have been really useful to have read the book 25 years ago: I think you're going to benefit from having a few years of real-world development experience before reading this book. The profundity, impact and applicability to your work will be much greater. Highly re…

> I first read SICP after 25 years of professional development, and while I didn't learn anything new I did see things in a whole new light. How is possible that you read the whole book and didn't learn anything new?

It refactors your thought process.

Re: Paul Graham on SICP (2000)

#92

Post by deepaksurti »

>> Yet SICP, which is pretty much the bible of our world, has only three?

pg posted his review on May 20, 2000, when it had 3 stars. From then till today, the book has 4.5 stars. What must have caused this change of opinion?

Re: Paul Graham on SICP (2000)

#93

Post by rhaps0dy »

deepaksurti wrote: post #92

>> Yet SICP, which is pretty much the bible of our world, has only three? pg posted his review on May 20, 2000, when it had 3 stars. From then till today, the book has 4.5 stars. What must have caused this change of opinion?

Maybe Paul Graham and Ycombinator getting famous. Or the MIT CS undergrad "intro to CS" switching to Python so the disgruntled undergrads no longer give 1-star reviews.

Re: Paul Graham on SICP (2000)

#94

Post by rhaps0dy »

stan_rogers wrote: post #45
bdcs wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I'm out of the loop. Is pg referring to et. al.? As in `and others` (et alia/alii/aliae)?

Yes. Exactly that. In a short (bibliography or card catalogue) listing, SICP would have been by Abelson et al .

I did get that, but why is asking the undergrads "who is al" a joke?

Re: Paul Graham on SICP (2000)

#95

Post by Marazan »

I still hold that part 1 (building abstractions with procedures) of SICP is not that good from a teaching perspective. The continual reliance on more and more obtuse mathematical formulae for the programming examples is sub-obtimal for engaging or informing a reader who does not have a strong mathematical background.

This is made even clearer in part 2 (building abstractions with data) which is an absolute masterclass in clear effective teaching. Part 2 is everything part 1 is not. It is approachable, immediate, ...tactile in its examples.

I've always wondered if the two section were written by the different authors.

Re: Paul Graham on SICP (2000)

#96

Post by cup-of-tea »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #44
bogomipz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is CLOS? Is this an acronym? Google is failing me here.

CLOS is--IMHO--the most advanced object system ever invented. The freedom that comes from CLOS is mind-blowing. Learning what CLOS can do will make you hate every other object-oriented programming system.

Very true. And the most mind blowing thing? CLOS is implemented in Lisp itself using macros. So as a Lisp user, you are able to extend the language to include the best implementation of any particular paradigm that exists.

Re: Paul Graham on SICP (2000)

#97

Post by olavk »

blackrock wrote: post #70

I wish they rewrote this using Python code. Maybe someone can take up the mantle on that.

Two points:

1) Scheme is really really simple to learn. If learning a new language is a major obstacle, you will not be able to finish the course anyway, since it includes implementing multiple small languages.

2) Some of the tasks would be nearly impossible in Python (or any other non-homoiconic language). One exercise is implementing a metacircular evaluator. To do this in Python would require you to implement scanner, parser etc - a major undertaking.

Re: Paul Graham on SICP (2000)

#98

Post by olavk »

tlrobinson wrote: post #79
euske wrote: post #69

This book gives you a coherent view of computation. It's not just a turing machine that keeps munching instructions. I think this book takes a more dataflow-centric approach. Some people would love it, and I agree this is a good introduction for early CS students. It is focused and compact. That said, I think the enthusiasm surrounding this book is a little bit cult-like. Reading this book doesn't necessarily make yo…

> Reading this book doesn't necessarily make you a good programmer I don't think I've seen anyone claim SICP will make you a "good" programmer. I have seem people claim it will make a good programmer better, though.

I you have finished SICP (including exercises) I will posit you must be a pretty decent programmer. (Which is not necessarily the same as a good developer, but that is a different discussion.)

Re: Paul Graham on SICP (2000)

#99

Post by brennebeck »

chasote wrote: post #61
merolish wrote: post #11

It's available online for free from the publisher: https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/index.html (I wish I'd kept my Knight of the Lambda Calculus button. Even having had prior programming experience, 6.001 was not pleasant.)

I also like this free HTML5 (and EPUB3) version as well. It just feels really clean. https://github.com/sarabander/sicp http://sarabander.github.io/sicp/html/index.xhtml

Agreed. Really nice work done on this.

Re: Paul Graham on SICP (2000)

#100

Post by dajomu »

I have a copy of SICP sitting on my shelf right now. I've really wanted to get started on it, but I must say that it seems like the kind of book that would take hundreds of hours to get through (with all the exercises, etc). Is that true?

Roughly how long have people taken to get through it?

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