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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)

#151

Post by alabhyajindal »

kccqzy wrote: post #78
alabhyajindal wrote: post #12

I really wanted to like SICP but Lisp throws me off. I love Haskell and Standard ML however! Did others have a similar experience? Might be interesting to read a book similar in spirit to SICP but using a different language as a vehicle (No, I don't want to do SICP in JavaScript).

I don't understand why Lisp throws you off. I only read SICP after I became proficient in Haskell and it is just fine.

I'm not comfortable writing S-expressions. It feels very weird to me. I understand this is not a major issue. I'm hoping I stick with the book the next time I pick it up!

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

#152

Post by f1shy »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #107
__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…

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

Isn’t t it what SICP is all about?!

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

#153

Post by zelphirkalt »

__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…

I think abstraction layers exist at the system design level as well. Many of the things SICP teaches apply there as well.

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

#154

Post by fnord77 »

__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…

Do you have any distributed systems design books to recommend?

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

#155

Post by nyolfen »

jltsiren wrote: post #143
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think CS 30 years ago was closer to computer engineering today. At my uni 10 years ago the CS program didn’t touch anything related to hardware, hell the CS program didn’t even need to take multivariable calculus. In my computer engineering program we covered solid state physics, electromagnetism, digital electronics design, digital signals processing, CPU architecture, compiler design, OS design, algorithms, softw…

Computers today are slower than they have ever been. And tomorrow's computers are going to be even slower. In many applications, the amount of data grows at least as quickly as computer performance. If the time complexity of an algorithm is superlinear, today's computer needs more time to run it with today's data than yesterday's computer did with yesterday's data. Algorithms that used to be practical get more and mo…

if we're talking about relative human-experienced performance, the slowest computers i ever owned were in the early-mid 00s. they sped up as multicore and ssd's entered the picture and plateaued about ten years ago ime.

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

#156

Post by chongli »

abeppu wrote: post #134
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…

I'm fine with the claim that CS is not about computers as astronomy is not about telescopes, but there are pure CS courses that don't cover programming and do cover automata, turing machines, computability, complexity etc and don't cover programming. SICP is about programs in a running language rather than abstract idealized computations, and is centered around reading and writing programs as examples. I think its su…

If you watch the lecture videos they make it a point of emphasis that they’re not interested in teaching LISP and that the course is not a LISP course. To show running programs they had to select some programming language. This was a regrettable concession because some students will inevitably think the course is about that language and miss the general principles they’re trying to teach:

1. Primitive operations

2. Means of combination

3. Means of abstraction

These are the three main features of programming languages, according to Sussman and Abelson. They wanted us to stop bikeshedding over the superficial details and just look at a tool for these 3 features, then be able to implement the algorithms and data structures we already know. This is how you become a wizard who can cast magic spells.

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

#158

Post by lelele »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #107
__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…

> the old Hennessy and Patterson book, which I believe is still used today.

Do you mean "Computer Organization and Design - The Hardware / Software Interface" or "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach"? Thanks.

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

#159

Post by jpc0 »

__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…

> I think the much more important skill is designing systems

Systems engineering is a seperate discipline in engineering fields, same applies to CS I would think, specifically if you look at what most developers do as computer engineering it would only make sense that there is forward progression within the discipline that builds on the foundations tought in most CS courses.

Regarding CS not teaching caching, well any course writer in a CS program that doesn't at least touch on that should feel like they failed their students, it is really something fundamental that should be tought pretty soon.

I feel like profiling should be something that is tought somewhere in a CS program, even a half semester course can dramatically improve peoples understanding of what the machine is actually doing.

On that note, even if you never intend to use the language, watch some C++ conference talks, almost every year at every conference thwre is a talk discussing performance.

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

#160

Post by michaeldh »

chongli wrote: post #13
abeppu wrote: post #10

> In fact, I’d go further and say that it’s the only computer science book of that age that I’d happily and usefully read again without it being just for historical interest: the content has barely aged at all. That’s not all that unusual for mathematics books, but it’s almost unheard of in computer science, where the ideas move so quickly and where much of what’s written about is ephemeral rather than foundational.…

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…

You don't think they can address both needs? What are non-MIT schools teaching when they teach CS if it's not SICP? Is everyone else just a vocational school?
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