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How to Design Programs (2014)

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Re: How to Design Programs (2014)

#81

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

astrange wrote: post #30
bogomipz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"MIX/MMIX are close to how CPUs work physically." What is MIX/MMIX? Is this something specific to the SICP book?

Knuth's TAOCP was originally written in an imaginary 60s-style CISC assembly called MIX (with some oddities like being decimal) but newer editions are in a RISC style one called MMIX (which Knuth claims is more practical but really isn't.)

Well, all I can say about that is that I read through the MMIX supplement and did a bunch of the exercises, and I know have enough knowledge to vaguely understand assembly.

It hasn't been massively useful to me in my professional life (I'm a data scientist), but it definitely has helped me to gain a deeper appreciation of how computing works.

Re: How to Design Programs (2014)

#84

Post by dominicjj »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #41

I am self taught, I worked as a lawyer for six years and four of those were spent prepping for a career change - self-teaching comp sci and software dev in the evenings, then working as a volunteer a few years in. (I come from an engineering family and should have just done it from the start, but oh well.) I'm not sure if it's still on the platform, but about a year into my self studying I took a series of courses on…

So what you're saying is:

“Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot.”

Re: How to Design Programs (2014)

#86

Post by agumonkey »

minikomi wrote: post #62
axarydax wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember which book that was? Sounds interesting.

Sounds like the reasoned schemer!

The whole series is very high grade. I don't appreciate the dialogue format all the time (too fine grained and a bit distracting after the first book). But high density of knowledge here.

Re: How to Design Programs (2014)

#87

Post by uxp100 »

adjkant wrote: post #53
eyelidlessness wrote: post #44

I don’t mean to crap on something that might be great but... has anyone tried to make this usable on a phone or for even moderately poor vision? I barely noticed there was actually content to be accessed at all, just a tiny “next” black on darkish grey link.

This is basically just Scribble (docs for Racket). If you have input, I'd venture to guess contributions are more than welcome! https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/

That is always the response when people point out scribble output is unusable on many phones. But in fact people have offered fixes and they were rejected. Were they high quality fixes? I don’t know, not knowledgeable about CSS. I don’t think the project maintainers consider being useful at all on mobile a goal of scribble.

So I would say, contributions do not seem to be welcome on this topic.

Re: How to Design Programs (2014)

#88

Post by TeMPOraL »

spekcular wrote: post #4
adamnemecek wrote: post #2

I never understood the appeal of this book.

I never understood the appeal of this, or SICP, or Scheme in general. I learned much more about computer science reading algorithms and data structures textbooks, especially Knuth. There's a reason MIT uses Python for its intro courses now, after all.

> There's a reason MIT uses Python for its intro courses now, after all.

Yes, and IIRC, that reasons were, roughly: a) Python is more popular, b) Python has better robotics libraries, which is what kids coming to MIT care about these days. Notably, I don't recall the reasons they given having anything to do with giving students a good fundamental understanding.

Re: How to Design Programs (2014)

#89

Post by tartoran »

nils-m-holm wrote: post #68
axarydax wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember which book that was? Sounds interesting.

50 pages? I think it is Logic Programming in Scheme: http://t3x.org/amk/

Yes, this is the book and I guess I am replying to the author:) Thank you Nils M Holm. This book is very much on my taste, it contains exactly what it should and nothing more and nothing less. I guess some would prefer the Reasoned Schemer style but I find the dialogue a bit distracting for the first book.

I ordered a paperback from lulu and it was a great decision, I use a marker and write on the margins. It is absolutely worth it.

https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/nils-m-holm/logic-programmin...

Re: How to Design Programs (2014)

#90

Post by nemoniac »

dominicjj wrote: post #84
Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #41

I am self taught, I worked as a lawyer for six years and four of those were spent prepping for a career change - self-teaching comp sci and software dev in the evenings, then working as a volunteer a few years in. (I come from an engineering family and should have just done it from the start, but oh well.) I'm not sure if it's still on the platform, but about a year into my self studying I took a series of courses on…

So what you're saying is: “Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot.”

The quote is from Eric S. Raymond, How to Become a Hacker
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