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Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (1996) [pdf]

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Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (1996) [pdf]

#121

Post by ColinWright »

sriram_malhar wrote: post #107
elteto wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that is a fantastic story! Kudos for completing your PhD! Would you mind expanding a bit more about your PhD? Which school did you go to? Did you find that your age made it more difficult to get in/stay in once accepted? How did you handle family commitments (if you had them)? Reason I ask is because I've been considering going back to school to get a PhD. Again, that is quite an achievement, so congrats!

Thank you much. Sorry for the wall of text, but you got me going! I had been living and working in California, and found myself at the crest of the dot-com wave of the late 90's and early '00s. But post-SICP, I _had_ to dig deeper. I didn't feel prepared for the schools I wanted to apply to: Berkeley & Stanford. I am totally self-taught, and not having taken an exam in any CS subjects, the subject GRE was a huge ment…

Wonderful narrative - thank you for writing this. It's close enough to my experience to ring many bells, but different enough that it was excellent to read.

I did Part III in '83/84 and a PhD in DPMMS from '84 to '87, and having come in to the Cambridge system from outside, I was way out of my depth. The amount I learned was quite unbelievable.

If you'd like to connect and share experiences, by contact details are in my profile.

Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (1996) [pdf]

#122

Post by ilammy »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #65

> You are probably reading it in an Info hypertext browser, such as the Info mode of Emacs. You might alternatively be reading it TEX-formatted on your screen or printer, though that would be silly. I'm read a PDF :/

I guess that’s talking about reading the TeX markup itself.

Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (1996) [pdf]

#123

Post by mdibiase »

sriram_malhar wrote: post #107
elteto wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that is a fantastic story! Kudos for completing your PhD! Would you mind expanding a bit more about your PhD? Which school did you go to? Did you find that your age made it more difficult to get in/stay in once accepted? How did you handle family commitments (if you had them)? Reason I ask is because I've been considering going back to school to get a PhD. Again, that is quite an achievement, so congrats!

Thank you much. Sorry for the wall of text, but you got me going! I had been living and working in California, and found myself at the crest of the dot-com wave of the late 90's and early '00s. But post-SICP, I _had_ to dig deeper. I didn't feel prepared for the schools I wanted to apply to: Berkeley & Stanford. I am totally self-taught, and not having taken an exam in any CS subjects, the subject GRE was a huge ment…

This was a fantastic read. Thanks for sharing it!

Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (1996) [pdf]

#124

Post by peterkelly »

sriram_malhar wrote: post #92

SICP shows up every few months on HN, and I upvote enthusiastically every single time! I am a self-taught programmer, and survived a long time on C/C++/Java etc. I was smugly confident in my confined space. Then I came across SICP. I discovered a world of closures, streams, object-orientation done using closures, infinite series using streams, lazy evaluation, functional programming, and so much more. It was such a s…

> SICP shows up every few months on HN, and I upvote enthusiastically every single time!

This book is so important I sometimes think there should be a link pinned to the front page.

It too really opened my eyes like no other book had and was a major influence on my PhD work and also subsequent projects I've done in industry. I really liked your other detailed comment about your experience, and am jealous you got to work alongside such major players in the field :)

Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (1996) [pdf]

#125

Post by peterkelly »

jholman wrote: post #74
formalsystem wrote: post #15

Anyone else feel like this book is really overrated? I've enjoyed the classical mechanics book by the same authors a lot more since it goes over a particularly good application where functional ideas shine

I do think it's a book of quality, which admittedly is a relatively rare category. But yes, I think it's hugely overrated, especially when characterized as the "one true best way" or something, to learn programming. (Note that I am commenting on the first half or so of the book, never having gotten past that. Maybe the last half of the book is the best book ever written, I do not know.) For one thing, half of the exa…

The first half of the book is basically just warm-up material to set the scene. Chapters 4 and 5 are what make it truly special.

Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (1996) [pdf]

#126

Post by sireat »

dorfsmay wrote: post #45
methehack wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally respect and even admire dissenting opinions, but, on the contrary, this book is magic for me. For me, it connects programming to larger and vital human endeavor. K&R does that for me too, so maybe it's a me thing.

That's an interesting comparison. K&R did nothing for me, I honestly did not understand C until I read Harbison & Steele.

30 years later I still love K&R . Harbison & Steele is a fantastic reference.

However, I could never get into SICP mostly because it was so... impractical and pure.

Besides i'd had enough of RPN working on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektronika_MK-61 .

I suppose one should get into SICP when one is still at the right age (<25)

Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (1996) [pdf]

#127

Post by elteto »

sriram_malhar wrote: post #107
elteto wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that is a fantastic story! Kudos for completing your PhD! Would you mind expanding a bit more about your PhD? Which school did you go to? Did you find that your age made it more difficult to get in/stay in once accepted? How did you handle family commitments (if you had them)? Reason I ask is because I've been considering going back to school to get a PhD. Again, that is quite an achievement, so congrats!

Thank you much. Sorry for the wall of text, but you got me going! I had been living and working in California, and found myself at the crest of the dot-com wave of the late 90's and early '00s. But post-SICP, I _had_ to dig deeper. I didn't feel prepared for the schools I wanted to apply to: Berkeley & Stanford. I am totally self-taught, and not having taken an exam in any CS subjects, the subject GRE was a huge ment…

Thank you so much for the detailed answer! Such an inspiring story and told with such humbleness. You are inspiring.

Your note on "fear" holding you back rings a bell. As I have aged (and I have not aged that much!) I have noticed the same. And I feel like it gets worse every year. I haven't found a better solution than just jumping in outside my comfort zones, but alas, this is so hard that I find myself barely doing it.

But people like you remind me that it can be done! And this is very important because knowing that someone else did it cancels some portion of that internal discourse of "You can't do it.".

Thanks again.

Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (1996) [pdf]

#128

Post by molteanu »

fierarul wrote: post #119
tobinfricke wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full text has been freely available online for years: https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-text/... Also, the physical book is available for only $40.

Last I looked in Europe the price is more like $65, about the same as a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB of RAM. I know technical books are expensive and the book has 688 pages but it seems expensive. If somebody wants to ship their used SICP book in Romania I would love to take it. It's on my wish list since forever.

Check some second-hand online stores like abebooks (mostly ships from US so it's way too expensive) or from biblio which has more accessible shipping rates [1]

Salutari din Romania!

https://www.biblio.com/search.php?author=&title=structure+an...

Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (1996) [pdf]

#129

Post by ScottBurson »

sriram_malhar wrote: post #107
elteto wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that is a fantastic story! Kudos for completing your PhD! Would you mind expanding a bit more about your PhD? Which school did you go to? Did you find that your age made it more difficult to get in/stay in once accepted? How did you handle family commitments (if you had them)? Reason I ask is because I've been considering going back to school to get a PhD. Again, that is quite an achievement, so congrats!

Thank you much. Sorry for the wall of text, but you got me going! I had been living and working in California, and found myself at the crest of the dot-com wave of the late 90's and early '00s. But post-SICP, I _had_ to dig deeper. I didn't feel prepared for the schools I wanted to apply to: Berkeley & Stanford. I am totally self-taught, and not having taken an exam in any CS subjects, the subject GRE was a huge ment…

Is your dissertation online?

Re: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (1996) [pdf]

#130

Post by koreth1 »

jholman wrote: post #74
formalsystem wrote: post #15

Anyone else feel like this book is really overrated? I've enjoyed the classical mechanics book by the same authors a lot more since it goes over a particularly good application where functional ideas shine

I do think it's a book of quality, which admittedly is a relatively rare category. But yes, I think it's hugely overrated, especially when characterized as the "one true best way" or something, to learn programming. (Note that I am commenting on the first half or so of the book, never having gotten past that. Maybe the last half of the book is the best book ever written, I do not know.) For one thing, half of the exa…

The pure-math focus is what made it a slog for me to get through, though I'm clearly not the intended audience. I was 20+ years out of college when I first read it and it had been over a decade since the last time I'd had any reason to think at all about many of the areas of math it takes as a given that the reader knows like the back of their hand. To be fair, I would have been more comfortable with the examples if I'd read the book in my first year of college, with high-school calculus still fresh in my mind. But as it was, I spent way more time reading Wikipedia pages about the math concepts in the examples than I spent thinking about the concepts the book was trying to use those examples to illuminate.

It was worth the read. I just think with a wider variety of examples, I could have gotten the exact same benefit with far less extraneous effort.

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