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SICP is Under Attack

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Re: SICP is Under Attack

#81

Post by gswang »

kenjackson wrote: post #80
gswang wrote: post #78

Whoa, stop. There's a lot of issues in this article. First of all, Berkeley is NOT getting rid of SICP and SICP ideas. This is flat out untrue. I'm a recent instructor for the course, and I've spoken to several TA's about this course. Below is a rough summary of what we've discussed. This should not be construed as the "official line", but take from it what you will. First, Berkeley are not getting rid of SICP. ‎For…

In my mind, SICP is better as a capstone, senior course. Think about all of us who defend it. Do we think that we could reach a better audience with that message if the audience were seniors looking for a summary/enlightenment, rather than freshmen exploring CS and engineering applications? Indeed. I read SICP while in grad school w/ the online lectures. Frankly, I'm not sure I would have appreciated SICP nearly as m…

The link was the 6.945 course at MIT. As I understand it, it's SICP used in a graduate course. It still shows up on google if you search 6.945.

For the truly inquiring student, there's also a planned self-paced version of the course that may also include an honors option to dive deeper than what we can do in 61A (aka, SICP/6.001).

Re: SICP is Under Attack

#83

Post by mightybyte »

palish wrote: post #8

So did anyone else look at the challenge problem, see f(n-3), f(n-2), and f(n-1), then immediately think "oh. A three element array would solve that"? Took me less than 60 seconds... I'm a little worried that I'm so good at imperative programming, though, since it might indicate that I'm "crippled" when it comes to functional programming. I bet one of you could code circles around me when it comes to e.g. implementin…

Dive into Haskell with whatever interests you. Try solving some Project Euler problems (http://projecteuler.net). Or, maybe web programming suits your fancy (http://snapframework.com). If you're more visual you might play around with these exercises which don't even require you to install anything.

http://pnyf.inf.elte.hu/fp/FunctionGraphs_en.xml

http://pnyf.inf.elte.hu/fp/Diagrams_en.xml

Others here: http://pnyf.inf.elte.hu/fp/Overview_en.xml

Re: SICP is Under Attack

#85

Post by colanderman »

palish wrote: post #8

So did anyone else look at the challenge problem, see f(n-3), f(n-2), and f(n-1), then immediately think "oh. A three element array would solve that"? Took me less than 60 seconds... I'm a little worried that I'm so good at imperative programming, though, since it might indicate that I'm "crippled" when it comes to functional programming. I bet one of you could code circles around me when it comes to e.g. implementin…

I looked at it and thought, "easy, I'll just rewrite the Scheme function in Mercury and tell the compiler to memoize the function."

Of course, obviously the point of the exercise is to encourage thinking about how a computer actually performs computations, which is in a linear, imperative fashion. In that case, why use Scheme in the first place? Its syntax and semantics encourage exactly the opposite style of programming, and in my opinion, obstruct the learning process in this kind of problem.

To make an analogy, teaching this problem using Scheme is like teaching someone how to bake a cake using an unplugged Kitchenaid. The Kitchenaid would work great if it was plugged in, but it's not, so you have to push the beater around by hand. Why not just use a hand beater in the first place? [Scheme would work great for this problem if it had memoization, but it doesn't, so you have to solve the problem as if you were using Python. Why not just use Python in the first place?]

Re: SICP is Under Attack

#87

Post by nvictor »

atdt wrote: post #75
pnathan wrote: post #12

Practical programming should not be the point of early computer science curricula.

Why on earth not? What's so bad about starting at a high level of abstraction and then progressively peeling the abstraction away to get to the core concepts?

freshmen are easily bored?

Re: SICP is Under Attack

#89

Post by naughtysriram »

Wonderful article..

- Lambda - The Ultimate Ponzi Scheme ;)

- SICP is a bit old book :(

- Things must EVOLVE, Mutation is bad ;)

- The best way to make both ends meet is to tie a knot ;)

- SICP 2.0 - Why don't the nirvana hackers hack the SICP book and lay down stuff they have learnt since their enlightment, as a legacy for all the future CS students? :)

- It will be a OPEN book, highly reviewed and revered ;)

Re: SICP is Under Attack

#90

Post by palish »

mightybyte wrote: post #83
palish wrote: post #8

So did anyone else look at the challenge problem, see f(n-3), f(n-2), and f(n-1), then immediately think "oh. A three element array would solve that"? Took me less than 60 seconds... I'm a little worried that I'm so good at imperative programming, though, since it might indicate that I'm "crippled" when it comes to functional programming. I bet one of you could code circles around me when it comes to e.g. implementin…

Dive into Haskell with whatever interests you. Try solving some Project Euler problems ( http://projecteuler.net ). Or, maybe web programming suits your fancy ( http://snapframework.com ). If you're more visual you might play around with these exercises which don't even require you to install anything. http://pnyf.inf.elte.hu/fp/FunctionGraphs_en.xml http://pnyf.inf.elte.hu/fp/Diagrams_en.xml Others here: http://pnyf…

Thanks!
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