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SICP: The only computer science book worth reading twice? (2010)

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Re: SICP: The only computer science book worth reading twice? (2010)

#101

Post by sakras »

neilv wrote: post #3

The article has a broken link for the free copy: https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/b... https://web.mit.edu/6.001/6.037/sicp.pdf I hadn't seen a blessed PDF version until today. Circa 2001, only the HTML version was freely available, and someone converted it to TeXinfo: https://www.neilvandyke.org/sicp-texi/ If anyone wants to work through SICP today, you can run the code in MIT Scheme, or in…

Just as a data point, I'd recommend going through it in Racket, which I believe has an explicit SICP mode. I went through it in GNU Guile and it was a pain because there were some minor syntactic differences between Guile and MIT Scheme.

Re: SICP: The only computer science book worth reading twice? (2010)

#102

Post by nioj »

esfandia wrote: post #64
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #31

It’s interesting, SICP and other many other “classic” texts talk about designing programs, but these days I think the much more important skill is designing systems. I don’t know if distributed systems is consider part of “Computer Science” but it is a much more common problem that I see needs to be solved. I try to write systems in the simplest way possible and then use observability tools to figure out where the de…

The right book for the right problem. SICP isn't meant to teach you how to tackle fault-tolerance in a complex distributed system. Here is a textbook that talks about distributed systems (van Steen and Tannenbaum): https://www.amazon.ca/Distributed-Systems-Maarten-van-Steen/...

You can also get a free PDF version of that textbook here https://www.distributed-systems.net/index.php/books/ds4/ (you only need to provide an email)

Re: SICP: The only computer science book worth reading twice? (2010)

#103

Post by porknubbins »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #60
ozim wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well CS and software dev in trenches moved a bit. There are still jobs where people write frameworks, database engines or version control tools. Those jobs require heavy CS and algorithms, data structures day to day. But there are less of those jobs nowadays as no one is implementing db engine for their app they just use Postgres. Other jobs that is vast majority is dealing with implementing business logic. Using dat…

> while using CS background to fully understand frameworks already existing. Most frameworks today are so complicated that you typically cannot understand them fully, and even understanding them somewhat partially is more than a full-time job.

I wish someone told me this back when I was trying to get a programming job as a self taught programmer. I would do things like try to build a simple React clone thinking it would help me overcome imposter syndrome to fully understand things from the base up, but it was pretty futile because no one really has time to wrap their head around something that big unless they are paid full time to do it.

Re: SICP: The only computer science book worth reading twice? (2010)

#104

Post by sameoldtune »

inopinatus wrote: post #93
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #31

It’s interesting, SICP and other many other “classic” texts talk about designing programs, but these days I think the much more important skill is designing systems. I don’t know if distributed systems is consider part of “Computer Science” but it is a much more common problem that I see needs to be solved. I try to write systems in the simplest way possible and then use observability tools to figure out where the de…

Scouring SICP cannot imbue the student with mechanical sympathy any more than poring over analysis of Coltrane makes me a saxophonist. Nevertheless. It must be done. Theory and practice.

Nicely said. The way I think about it: if we can’t write legible and adaptable functions, then we have no chance at making viable systems. All the same engineering skills are at play, just on a different scale.

Re: SICP: The only computer science book worth reading twice? (2010)

#106

Post by chongli »

PittleyDunkin wrote: post #35
chongli wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall that when MIT stopped teaching with SICP, one of the main claims was that programming now is often not about thinking abstractions through from first principles, and creating some isolated gem of composing definitions. Which is a category mistake that they actually address in the lectures. SICP is not a programming course, it’s a computer science course. Computer science is not about computers, let alone pro…

> SICP is not a programming course, it’s a computer science course. I don't see what you mean by this at all. Furthermore this doesn't strike me as a useful distinction when a) it doesn't cover most topics labeled by consensus as "computer science" and b) it very clearly does teach a great deal about programming. Why not say it teaches computer science and programming skills? Why do these have to be exclusive? There'…

I don't see what you mean by this at all

The goal of the course is not to teach programming skills, it's to teach computer science. The difference is explained quite thoroughly in the lectures. One might even say that answering the question "what is computer science?" is one of the core goals of the course and a major part of the philosophy of the professors who created the course.

The argument being made by the comparisons to geometry and astronomy is that in any discipline there is a difference between means and ends: what you are attempting to achieve is distinct from the tools you're using to achieve it. Furthermore, it's a mistake to believe that the discipline is all about the tools. No, the tools are the means, not the end.

Re: SICP: The only computer science book worth reading twice? (2010)

#107

Post by seanmcdirmid »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #31

It’s interesting, SICP and other many other “classic” texts talk about designing programs, but these days I think the much more important skill is designing systems. I don’t know if distributed systems is consider part of “Computer Science” but it is a much more common problem that I see needs to be solved. I try to write systems in the simplest way possible and then use observability tools to figure out where the de…

> but these days I think the much more important skill is designing systems.

It is hard to design systems if you don't have the perspective of implementing them. Yes, you move up the value chain to designing things, no, but no, you don't get to skip gaining experience lower down the value chain.

> What computer science doesn’t teach you is how memory caching works in CPUs.

That was literally my first quarter in my CS undergrad 30 years ago, the old Hennessy and Patterson book, which I believe is still used today. Are things so different now?

> The much more common problems I have is how to deal with fault tolerance, correctness in distributed locks and queues, and system scalability.

All of that was covered in my CS undergrad, I wasn't even in a fancy computer engineering/EE background.

Re: SICP: The only computer science book worth reading twice? (2010)

#108

Post by [deleted] »

porknubbins wrote: post #103
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while using CS background to fully understand frameworks already existing. Most frameworks today are so complicated that you typically cannot understand them fully, and even understanding them somewhat partially is more than a full-time job.

I wish someone told me this back when I was trying to get a programming job as a self taught programmer. I would do things like try to build a simple React clone thinking it would help me overcome imposter syndrome to fully understand things from the base up, but it was pretty futile because no one really has time to wrap their head around something that big unless they are paid full time to do it.

[deleted]

Re: SICP: The only computer science book worth reading twice? (2010)

#109

Post by nomilk »

I considered reading SICP recently but this changed my mind:

> It's old and feels old. originally in scheme, they recently re released the book in JavaScript which is more approachable to today's audiences and there are still good things in there about encapsulation and building dsls. ymmv. Though the language and programming design concepts hold up, we're playing at higher levels of abstraction on more powerful machines and consequently the examples sometimes seem too tiny and simple.

I had studied economics in a similar way, but learning slightly old/outdated ideas demotivated me - I was much more interested in learning what works and what's considered the best way to do things, not what had been considered a good idea at some point in the past.

I don't want to be a downer on SICP (especially since I haven't even read it), but I hope this info might help others (or elicit a strong refutation).

Re: SICP: The only computer science book worth reading twice? (2010)

#110

Post by Buttons840 »

lovecg wrote: post #49
tkiolp4 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find books like SICP interesting and not very useful. I love reading them because I like this stuff, but I don’t get to apply their teachings in real world software. It’s a problem because naturally I want to spend my time reading these kind of books, but if I do that I would be jobless. I need to divide my time between reading pearls like SICP and boring Kafka/Postgres/Golang/K8s/AWS documentation.

I don’t find them useful in the sense of directly applying practical techniques in my day job, but I consider them somewhat necessary background reading to get into the right state of mind. You can very quickly tell when someone never acquired any academic knowledge in this area (or never played with functional languages or similar pastimes) - you can’t explain to those people why modifying global variables all over…

You kind of defeat your own argument. You say it's important to learn "academic knowledge", but then acknowledge the organization will not value your knowledge.

I do agree with you though.

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