11–20 of 123 posts
I saw this the other day on Amazon while picking up the SICP instructor's edition. For the life of me, I can't figure out why they chose JavaScript to do this. And the new authors are professors . Since the original SICP has a permissive license, I've actually thought about doing something similar, but with a more modern functional language.
One major benefit here is how approachable this is. One could even simply open Dev Tools on their browser and use the console as a REPL. As someone who installed Scheme/Dr Scheme/Dr Racket long ago, it's nice to say, "you can get started right now". I know there'll be a lot of complaint about JS as a language choice but, it's pretty ubiquitous. And, much like Scheme, no one's saying, "you should use this for your nex…
SICP translated to JavaScript (2013): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6385617
SICP – Upcoming JavaScript Edition - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27737942 - July 2021 (2 comments)
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs – JavaScript Adaptation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21822903 - Dec 2019 (180 comments)
SICP JavaScript Going Public - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21779397 - Dec 2019 (1 comment)
SICP translated to JavaScript - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6385617 - Sept 2013 (107 comments)
First they replace Scheme with Python for their CS classes, and now SICP in JavaScript! Isn't this another portent from Nostradamus about the coming of the end of the world?
Note to the unaware, both* this version and the classic (Scheme) version are Creative Commons-licensed and freely available online. (*edit: thanks to keithwinstein for enlightening me -- I wrongly thought it was just the one. The publisher's site doesn't advertise this at all!) https://sicp.sourceacademy.org/ (JS version) https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/index.html (1984 classic)
The in-line editor is a bit intrusive (fills up most of my screen, unlike say eloquentjavascript.net) but it's still pretty neat to have run-able examples. Kudos to the creators.
One major benefit here is how approachable this is. One could even simply open Dev Tools on their browser and use the console as a REPL. As someone who installed Scheme/Dr Scheme/Dr Racket long ago, it's nice to say, "you can get started right now". I know there'll be a lot of complaint about JS as a language choice but, it's pretty ubiquitous. And, much like Scheme, no one's saying, "you should use this for your nex…
Having seen what having javascript as a first language does to first year students I can't understand why this is considered a good idea.
One major benefit here is how approachable this is. One could even simply open Dev Tools on their browser and use the console as a REPL. As someone who installed Scheme/Dr Scheme/Dr Racket long ago, it's nice to say, "you can get started right now". I know there'll be a lot of complaint about JS as a language choice but, it's pretty ubiquitous. And, much like Scheme, no one's saying, "you should use this for your nex…
I am also an APL/J fan and this footnote in SICP rings true:
[15] Richard Waters (1979) developed a program that automatically analyzes traditional Fortran programs, viewing them in terms of maps, filters, and accumulations. He found that fully 90 percent of the code in the Fortran Scientific Subroutine Package fits neatly into this paradigm. One of the reasons for the success of Lisp as a programming language is that lists provide a standard medium for expressing ordered collections so that they can be manipulated using higher-order operations. e programming language APL owes much of its power and appeal to a similar choice. In APL all data are represented as arrays, and there is a universal and convenient set of generic operators for all sorts of array operations.
Yes, I pre-ordered.
For those complaining about it being in JS, probably didn’t read SICP as it wasn’t about LISP. This isn’t about JS.