Why and How to Start Your SICP Trek
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Why and How to Start Your SICP Trek
1–10 of 65 posts
Re: Why and How to Start Your SICP Trek
#2Author here - happy to answer questions and address feedback. I suspect I didn't explain Lisp-in-Lisp as well as I need to, but maybe it's enough to get non-Lispers intrigued. :)
Re: Why and How to Start Your SICP Trek
#3Seems like a good idea, but it's horribly presented :-)
You should consider adding a TL;DR at the beginning, to explain what it is all about.
Re: Why and How to Start Your SICP Trek
#4For a gentle introduction to functional programming and Scheme/Racket, check out https://class.coursera.org/programdesign-002 and the How to Design Programs book http://htdp.org/
These can be good precursors before starting on SICP. I have to say, though, that I have never felt comfortable with LISP's syntax. The parentheses and the prefix notation are convenient for the parser, not the programmer. Pyret http://www.pyret.org/index.html might be a step in the right direction.
Re: Why and How to Start Your SICP Trek
#5When I first read the title/url I got excited. I remember on the thoughbot podcast, Ben Orenstein spoke about going to Cape Cod with some people to go through SICP in a nice but isolated setting. I thought something like that was being organized on a larger scale...
Still a very good article, with great arguments for why the book is a must-read. Great links too. I would also include something easy like Realm of Racket (or Land of Lisp) as a good first-date before shacking up with SICP.
Hacker Retreat does look great though. Wish I had the free time to give it a try.
Re: Why and How to Start Your SICP Trek
#6Author here - happy to answer questions and address feedback. I suspect I didn't explain Lisp-in-Lisp as well as I need to, but maybe it's enough to get non-Lispers intrigued. :)
what about the people who did not do a math major. Is this a book they can get through?
I tried once and saw that I had to read two other books before I could even read chapter one. one for discrete mathematics and the other for calculus. do you have any tips for the people in my situation?
Re: Why and How to Start Your SICP Trek
#7When I first read the title/url I got excited. I remember on the thoughbot podcast, Ben Orenstein spoke about going to Cape Cod with some people to go through SICP in a nice but isolated setting. I thought something like that was being organized on a larger scale... Still a very good article, with great arguments for why the book is a must-read. Great links too. I would also include something easy like Realm of Racke…
Can't say Berlin is an isolated setting, nor does it feel/look like Cape Cod, but it is nice - if you like cities, it's got something of everything. :) And the summer here is fantastic.
SICP is always "on" at Hacker Retreat - I've always got SICP buffers open. If you're able to work remotely from Berlin, consider coming to Batch-02 this summer.
Re: Why and How to Start Your SICP Trek
#8Author here - happy to answer questions and address feedback. I suspect I didn't explain Lisp-in-Lisp as well as I need to, but maybe it's enough to get non-Lispers intrigued. :)
what about the people who did not do a math major. Is this a book they can get through? I tried once and saw that I had to read two other books before I could even read chapter one. one for discrete mathematics and the other for calculus. do you have any tips for the people in my situation?
Not sure without knowing more of your background - provisional answer is "maybe." Some parts of Ch.1 are certainly math-heavy. The video lectures are quite accessible. Did you study, say, ~1 year of calculus?
Re: Why and How to Start Your SICP Trek
#9Seems like a good idea, but it's horribly presented :-) You should consider adding a TL;DR at the beginning, to explain what it is all about.
And the author may consider to keep the "quotes of famous people" part near the end or as an appendix.
Re: Why and How to Start Your SICP Trek
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
what about the people who did not do a math major. Is this a book they can get through? I tried once and saw that I had to read two other books before I could even read chapter one. one for discrete mathematics and the other for calculus. do you have any tips for the people in my situation?
Not sure without knowing more of your background - provisional answer is "maybe." Some parts of Ch.1 are certainly math-heavy. The video lectures are quite accessible. Did you study, say, ~1 year of calculus?
yes, 1 year of calculus. differentiation and integrals were the only two calculus topics that I recognized from that chapter. at the time when I was trying to get through sicp I wasn't sure whether the pay off was worth the effort of covering all those math topics and I wanted to learn other programming related topics as well with my time.