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SICP taught in Python 3 - UC Berkeley online

www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu

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SICP taught in Python 3 - UC Berkeley online

#1
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has been taught at UC Berkeley for 30 years using Scheme.

This semester Prof. Hilfinger is teaching it in Python 3. It isn't a formal online course, but it looks like everything is available including lectures, slides, book & homework.

SICP taught in Python 3 - UC Berkeley online
www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu

Re: SICP taught in Python 3 - UC Berkeley online

#2
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has been taught at UC Berkeley for 30 years using Scheme.

This semester Prof. Hilfinger is teaching it in Python 3. It isn't a formal online course, but it looks like everything is available including lectures, slides, book & homework.

Re: SICP taught in Python 3 - UC Berkeley online

#5

I like Python, but how do they plan on teaching recursion with a language that doesn't optimize tail recursion? Oh, I see, just give them trivially small data sets: http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp12/labs/lab8/lab8...

Coming from lisp/scheme, this is my least favorite corner of Python.

Re: SICP taught in Python 3 - UC Berkeley online

#8

I like Python, but how do they plan on teaching recursion with a language that doesn't optimize tail recursion? Oh, I see, just give them trivially small data sets: http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp12/labs/lab8/lab8...

Teaching recursion isn't an issue as long as they explain why you should avoid tail recursion in Python.

Re: SICP taught in Python 3 - UC Berkeley online

#9

I like Python, but how do they plan on teaching recursion with a language that doesn't optimize tail recursion? Oh, I see, just give them trivially small data sets: http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp12/labs/lab8/lab8...

When I studied SICP I used XLisp under DOS (no tail recursion, 640k). OTOH Python's default recursion limit of 1000 is even more restrictive than that.

The question I had is how are they going to code a metacircular interpreter? Apparently they make a Scheme interpreter instead.

Re: SICP taught in Python 3 - UC Berkeley online

#10
A little off topic, but reading from week one include a Unix/Emacs tutorial. I wish they would stop defining "cat" as a command to "displays the content of specified files". This trend in the "Unix teaching" community is leading to a lot of terrible practice (Useless use of Cat) in the industry.

I die a little every time I see $ cat file | grep word

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