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Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) Book

mitpress.mit.edu

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Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) Book

#31

Post by bryanrasmussen »

swiley wrote: post #17

My girlfriend has told me a couple times she wants to learn to program but this is the only intro book I own. I feel bad giving it to her because it just beats you with recursion right from the beginning (that isn’t to say it’s bad, I love it, that’s why I own a copy. I just feel like you’ll appreciate it most if you already know a little of some non functional language.) On the other hand she took it with us on a pi…

I happen to think SICP is a pretty good start for the reason you mention, the simplicity of syntax, in my experience it only gets hairy in the end when you start implement OOP on top of it.

Another good easy to learn as a first language in my experience is Rebol because it allows you to do stuff you ( meaning a person who uses a computer) might want to do quickly (send emails, scrape websites)

Of course another benefit of SICP is that it is written by people who are probably better writers about languages than most of the programmers hired to write programming books and articles.

Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) Book

#32

Post by cmrdsprklpny »

swiley wrote: post #17

My girlfriend has told me a couple times she wants to learn to program but this is the only intro book I own. I feel bad giving it to her because it just beats you with recursion right from the beginning (that isn’t to say it’s bad, I love it, that’s why I own a copy. I just feel like you’ll appreciate it most if you already know a little of some non functional language.) On the other hand she took it with us on a pi…

How to Design Programs (https://htdp.org/) is fantastic, I believe it's based off SICP but I found it a little more accessible. It leads into recursion pretty well and intuitively, probably the favorite programming book I've read.

Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) Book

#34

Post by brownianemotion »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #26
sergiosgc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SICP was used as the reference book for the introductory course on programming on my degree. People with prior experience had the most trouble with recursion. Students with no programming experience whatsoever grasped the concept pretty easily. I would try it out. It might need some analytically wired thought process, but again that is true for any kind of programming paradigm.

Recursion seems to be one of those inflection points that some people just can't get past.

A great way to let someone understand recursion is to let them learn how the principle of mathematical induction works. It gets rid of all the noise related to the programming language.

Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) Book

#35

Post by Aozora7 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #26
sergiosgc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SICP was used as the reference book for the introductory course on programming on my degree. People with prior experience had the most trouble with recursion. Students with no programming experience whatsoever grasped the concept pretty easily. I would try it out. It might need some analytically wired thought process, but again that is true for any kind of programming paradigm.

Recursion seems to be one of those inflection points that some people just can't get past.

What I personally see in academic setting is that when recursion is taught, it's taught using examples where you would not want to use recursion.

It's easy to understand why recursion is useful when you are tasked with traversing a file system. It's not when the first example you are given is calculating Fibonacci sequence.

Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) Book

#36

Post by dunefox »

peter_d_sherman wrote: post #2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_o... ">Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) is a computer science textbook by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman with Julie Sussman. It is known as the Wizard Book in hacker culture.[1][2] It teaches fundamental principles of computer programming, including recursion, abstraction, modular…

> Alyssa P. Hacker, a Lisp hacker

I always thought "Alice P. Hacker" would be much better

Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) Book

#37

Post by yomly »

andi999 wrote: post #20
yomly wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that I always find interesting is a bunch of fearless 18 year olds just throw themselves at SICP. Feel the pain and some survive. Then some Ruby/PHP/JS developers who have 5-10 years of coding experience tip their head at the book and say it's too hard or "only for senior people". Unlike the gym, with intellectual pursuits the only thing you can injure when you fail is your ego. If you learn to let go you w…

"intellectual pursuits the only thing you can injure when you fail is your ego" well, construction, mechanical and electeical engineering might have a different opinion.

Sorry to clarify - the act of studying knowledge from a book, carries limited risk. What you do with that knowledge or practical learnings are out of scope here. :)

Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) Book

#39

Post by browserface »

swiley wrote: post #17

My girlfriend has told me a couple times she wants to learn to program but this is the only intro book I own. I feel bad giving it to her because it just beats you with recursion right from the beginning (that isn’t to say it’s bad, I love it, that’s why I own a copy. I just feel like you’ll appreciate it most if you already know a little of some non functional language.) On the other hand she took it with us on a pi…

I'm sure she'll be fine. She sounds like she already is. She might exceed you. People can teach themselves right?

This book looks good but I don't think I should start reading it, because I get the feeling it's going to let me want to create my own "powerful programming language" and be led down that (long, probably dark) rabbit hole.

Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) Book

#40

Post by andi999 »

yomly wrote: post #37
andi999 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"intellectual pursuits the only thing you can injure when you fail is your ego" well, construction, mechanical and electeical engineering might have a different opinion.

Sorry to clarify - the act of studying knowledge from a book, carries limited risk. What you do with that knowledge or practical learnings are out of scope here. :)

Well, you can also learn things the wrong way and this can give you the impression you are an expert while the opposite is true.
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