Read or Do it? I just finished(did) the first chapter...
Poll: Have you read SICP?
21–30 of 110 posts
Re: Poll: Have you read SICP?
#22"Kinda started reading it but didn't get what the hype is all about". I put it on my to-read list after reading Peter Norvig's review. I read maybe 2% of it and skimmed a lot more. While I'm sure I could learn quite a bit if I seriously studied the whole thing, I'm not sure it would be a good use of my time: most of the contents I already studied in college, though in a quite different approach. There are topics that…
You'd be surprised. I worked through SICP a few years after graduating, and after the dragon book, and it still managed to warp my brain in new and exciting ways.
Re: Poll: Have you read SICP?
#23"Kinda started reading it but didn't get what the hype is all about". I put it on my to-read list after reading Peter Norvig's review. I read maybe 2% of it and skimmed a lot more. While I'm sure I could learn quite a bit if I seriously studied the whole thing, I'm not sure it would be a good use of my time: most of the contents I already studied in college, though in a quite different approach. There are topics that…
I think you're underestimating the depth of the book.
I read SICP and took a distance-learning version of 6.001 as a first-year grad student (undergrad BS in CS) and found it to be very challenging if your goal is mastery of the material. Another grad student, who was on a team that placed second in the national Putnam exam (i.e., a national-level math geek), also found it quite challenging.
Two of my professors, both now Fellows of the IEEE, also took the course with me and found it just as deep and original, and even more challenging, than we young computer weenies did.
Some courses, you have to take twice to master. For me, information theory was one of those. And I suspect that to a lot of MIT undergrads, 6.001 might be like that. The first time, you're just too bogged down in tactics to see the big picture(s).
Re: Poll: Have you read SICP?
#24Get PDF Version: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.98....
This is for those who hate to have the browser open to read something. Reading something in a PDF Viewer on touch enabled devices is much better.
Re: Poll: Have you read SICP?
#25I suggest you watch the original video lectures by Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman [1].
[1] http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussma...
Re: Poll: Have you read SICP?
#26I suggest you watch the original video lectures by Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman [1]. [1] http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussma...
Thanks so much for that link, this was the course I took some years ago. It's excellent.
Re: Poll: Have you read SICP?
#27Where's the answer "No, never heard of it"?
Re: Poll: Have you read SICP?
#28Personally, I'm a physician with an undergrad in physics, played with logo and basic as a kid. I picked up SICP and got to chapter 2 or 3 on my own time last summer but set it down to go learn Python as it was pretty obvious Abelson and Sussman expect you to either be a bachelor's degree candidate with a lot of time to work on this, or you have a substantial background understanding to bring to bear.
I tried Ruby but didn't like the flavor. Too sugary, too much stuff. My goal is really to add math to my diet, I don't need a job. I see Python as a good starting point to get some fundamentals under my belt, access to a large community with a lot of running software, and then get back to more lisp-like languages, R, and functional programming. Perhaps I didn't give Ruby a fair shake, I'll probably visit it again.
Lutz's Learning Python and Shaw's Learn Python the Hard Way have been a great combo for me as an independent student. Lutz does a great job of hand-holding in the beginning, which can be critical for the solo learner out there, but I wouldn't be the first who started getting impatient half-way through. Which is where LPTHW takes off. However, I have also gotten good use out of the beginnings of a lot material. A few notables:
* Brian Harvey's Scheme lectures at Berkeley (of all things) were absolutely critical to understanding recursion conceptually -- unfortunately they're gone now, which really makes me sad. http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details_new.php?seriesid=...
* Little Schemer -- I admit, I didn't see where it was going, shelved it, but loved the puzzling presentation. Will probably pick it back up after I finish LPTHW.
* Real World Haskell -- Some great introductory conceptual materal, but assumes a huge amount of prior knowledge. A noob can't pick up this book and learn programming.
* I just want to make mention of the fact that Windows hit the scene when I was a freshman in highschool and dominated my computing life for 15 years. The intellectual cost of that obstruction to the efficient use of my time can't be over-estimated. I have a visceral disgust for Windows that defies any logic.
* Conversely, my Cr-48 running Ubuntu has a wonderful study partner. It was quite wonderful to be reading LPTHW in Calibre, look to customize Calibre's buttons a bit, and find out it's written in Python. I have a visceral gratitude toward Google and the FLOSS community that defies any logic.
* Finally, Shaw's Advice from an Old Programmer is the best career advice, in any field, I've ever read (having done physics, military, and medicine). Read it or be square: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/advice.html
[edit]: for anyone who reloaded the page and found this comment elsewhere, my apologies. This part seemed better as a stand-alone comment.
Re: Poll: Have you read SICP?
#29"No, I don't feel it's relevant/valuable enough to make the time for it."
Re: Poll: Have you read SICP?
#30I took 6.001.
talked with a couple of guys from MIT who took 6.001, and asked them if they'd read SICP. They looked at each other and laughed, and said something along the lines of "Haha, ostensibly. I mean, we turned in our homework." Does that represent your experience as well? If that's a legitimate indicator of wider behavior on campus, then I can see why the professors might question the utility of that book in that setting.
It's an introductory text. You can easily cover it in a semester's worth of time.