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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

#11

Post by yomly »

theemptiness wrote: post #6

I was fortunate enough to encounter this book in a first-year programming course (Informatik, RWTH Aachen). The years before, they had used Modula-3 and in the years afterwards they switched to Java. While it certainly changed my life - first encounter with functional programming - and I will always appreciate it, it is now 23 years later and I think it is time to acknowledge some shortcomings. The thing that comes t…

There is an exercise - 2.29 where you implement a tree-like structure of objects.

Part d of the question is:

" d. Suppose we change the representation of mobiles so that the constructors are

(define (make-mobile left right) (cons left right)) (define (make-branch length structure) (cons length structure))

How much do you need to change your programs to convert to the new representation? "

It may not be discussed in depth - I suspect they decided it was out of scope for the book, but they were definitely thinking about it...

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

#12

Post by yomly »

watersb wrote: post #9

The very first Computer Science course in college. It was all downhill from there.

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 will realise how much you hamstring yourself with your own preconceptions in life.

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

#14

Post by cellularmitosis »

bajsejohannes wrote: post #10

I finally read SICP half way through my career, but at that point it was too much old news to keep me interested, even if I recognized that it was a really well written book. So I actually stopped half way. Does anyone know of a good summary or alternate text of all the knowledge in it?

Try skipping straight to 4.1 this time http://sarabander.github.io/sicp/html/4_002e1.xhtml#g_t4_002...

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

#15

Post by raptorraver »

bajsejohannes wrote: post #10

I finally read SICP half way through my career, but at that point it was too much old news to keep me interested, even if I recognized that it was a really well written book. So I actually stopped half way. Does anyone know of a good summary or alternate text of all the knowledge in it?

There is at least http://www.sicpdistilled.com

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

#16

Post by dunefox »

bajsejohannes wrote: post #10

I finally read SICP half way through my career, but at that point it was too much old news to keep me interested, even if I recognized that it was a really well written book. So I actually stopped half way. Does anyone know of a good summary or alternate text of all the knowledge in it?

This might be interesting as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Design_Programs

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

#17

Post by swiley »

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 picnic the other day and didn’t seem to mind, in fact the simplicity of scheme’s syntax actually seemed to help a lot (she tried python once and there were too many different syntactic structures, but that was me giving her a tutorial rather than going through a book so maybe I’m just a bad teacher.)

Does anyone have any suggestions?

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

#18

Post by andi999 »

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…

It depends on 'why' she wants to learn programming. What does she like and wants to be able to do herself? Like shiny gui, or webpages or own robot controller?

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

#19

Post by nestorD »

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…

If she is mathematically minded I would not be afraid of letting her learn with it (note that the corresponding course taught by the original authors is also available in video somewhere on the web and that you can use the SICP dialect with Racket).

Having discovered programming in a functional language (Ocaml) I found that it was people with prior experience in other languages (such as Python) who had the most trouble getting confortable with recurcion.

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

#20

Post by andi999 »

yomly wrote: post #12
watersb wrote: post #9

The very first Computer Science course in college. It was all downhill from there.

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.
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