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CS61A: The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

by curious16 on 6/26/23, 4:52 AM with 38 comments

• by easeout on 6/26/23, 3:00 PM

  For those interested in the original Scheme, here's that playlist of SICP lectures by the authors. I read and worked through the second edition book, but found these videos later. They added lots of value and emphasis beyond the written material. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE18841CABEA24090

• by zackmorris on 6/26/23, 4:48 PM

  Funny story: I took Scheme around 1995 for my first college programming class at UIUC, and nobody told me that we could split our code up into separate lines of execution. So I turned in all of my assignments for the semester as a multi-page function composed of higher-order methods executed in one shot. My teacher must have stared at some of them dumfounded, because they all worked. Although remembering back, I don't think I was the only student doing that!

  In the end, it helped me see that all programming is basically a spreadsheet and analogous to the STDIN/STDOUT stream processing of Unix executables. All of the stuff we think of as programming, like objects and classes, is basically hand waving to make problems/solutions supposedly fit in the human mind.

• by thisisauserid on 6/26/23, 11:24 AM

  I couldn't make head or tails of that link but the textbook his here: https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp12/book/index.html

  Looks awesome but I still wish there was a completed clojure version.

• by syngrog66 on 6/26/23, 7:49 PM

  SICP is one of my favorite books on programming. Along with GEB and Levy's Hackers.

  When I want to give a young person a headstart "sneak preview" taster into "our" culture -- or what I think our culture should be, on the intellectual plane, as an ideal, then I'm confident that these in particular can be stimulating little gems.

  OK, fine fine: also HHGG as the 4th of my top 3. The first book (in its series) especially but the entire 5+ books of its increasingly misnamed trilogy.

  And... Neuromancer. And Snow Crash. And Cryptonomicon. And...

• by jmort253 on 6/26/23, 12:22 PM

  Cool! I was in the process of reading the JavaScript version. Converting the book to various languages will help spread the concepts in this book to a larger audience.

• by vasili111 on 6/26/23, 1:23 PM

  Anyone have experience reading both LISP and Python version of SICP? Does the Python version as good as LISP version?

• by soegaard on 6/26/23, 2:56 PM

  Just in case: use an editor with support for Scheme.

  If you want something easy to install, try DrRacket.

  - tab indents the current line

  - cmd-I (or ctrl-I) will indent the entire buffer

  - Press ] to insert a matching closer (an parenthesis, bracket or brace)

  When you need it, install the `sicp` package to get the Henderson picture language (and more) used in the book.

• by alkonaut on 6/26/23, 12:35 PM

  Are there "conversions" for other languages as well? I know it's almost required reading for any software developer worth their salt, but I have several failed starts with the original version and have sworn to never have to read Lisp code. I get the gist. I get that Lisp elegantly represents the close tie between data and programs in a way that procedural programs never will, which is probably why it is chosen for the book. But no matter how perfectly suited for the task it is, I won't squint at lines ending in ))))) to try to see that meaning.