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Has anyone worked through SICP completely? How long did it take you? What do you think about it?

I've read the book and did most of the exercises. It took me two months of a summer where I did almost nothing else. It really change the way I look at computing but I was really new at the time.

>>9994 Well it's really more like magic.

I've been working through it. Currently up to the chapter on streams, I need to slow down and read the chapter again as I don't understand everything.

https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/sicp.html

>>9994 Currently at the end of the 3rd chapter. I think the time it takes you to go through it depends on too many factors (do you have previous programming experience? do you have a lot of time to spend on it? do you have a gf that you would fuarrrk instead of reading it? etc...)

>>10018 >Performing coitus instead of reading SICP You disappoint me anon

I actually started it recently. Pretty good thus far.

>>10001 Somehow, I still have some hope that this is not based upon what it looks like.

I'm not even that far in, and I already know I have to read it again at some point.

Hi, I am going through SICP using Clojure, but I am also in school and (now) work so going slowly. It's difficult for me, but it feels me with a sense of accomplishment and learning no class in college ever did. I hope I get more time to work on it :(

>>10170 fills, not feels

>>10170 Why are you doing it in Clojure?

>>10172 do you even async ?

>>10173 Same. Except it's more like Norvig commands and I obey.

>>10173 Why would you want async for SICP?

>>10172 Because I wanted to learn Clojure as well.

>>10170 Clojure or any Lisp will be fine for a lot of it, but I suggest that you do switch to Scheme. I thought the same thing and went through the first three chapters in Common Lisp and it just led to more headaches than anything else. Chapters 4 and 5 are also impossible without a major reworking of the code in any language that doesn't implement tail-order recursion because you're writing a Scheme interpreter in Scheme, while relies on infinite loops. While the book is certainly not ~about~ Scheme, it does heavily use the features of the language to demonstrate abstract concepts. You can probably go through the book in Clojure if you already know it well, but you wont be learning anything Clojure.

>>10181 Clojure is a pretty small language, around as big as Scheme is. You can honestly learn both of the basics in about a few hours for each. The only things you'd have to get used to is destructuring and clojure's weird loop/recur soykaf . It's not a gigantic (powerful) monstrosity (in a good way) that Common Lisp is that takes years to master. Really anon just use scheme, you learn all the scheme you need in chapters 1 and 2 of SICP that you need for the rest of the book. Scheme is really a language that stays out of your way as much as possible that lets your thoughts build the program, instead of the language building your program. this sounds really preachy and gay, sorry

SICP has been deprecated in favor of Composing Program. http://www.composingprograms.com/

>>10188 This looks interesting. What are people's opinions on this?

>>10189 People are trying really hard to rewrite SICP with fad languages.

I just started and I really like it, the only problem is the math. Especially with question 1.11, I really didn't understand how to implement the equation iteratively. I solved it by looking at the problem at a different angle. I know I'm going to take a long ass time doing the questions but from them I've learned quite a bit. It's also inspired me to go over math again.

>>10188 How to Design Programs is what deprecated SICP: http://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/fffk-htdp-vs-sicp-journal/paper.pdf

>>10181 You probably won't. Just use Scheme.

>>10196 Yeah math is my weak point as well. Recently I've been trying to go back and work through basic (high school) mathematics with proofs and work my way through it. I was never bad at math per se but I had some seriously soykaf math education growing up and I've found that a lot of my fundamentals are weak or missing entirely. >book recommended

>>10198 >deprecated It's actually just a different kind of course. SICP taught implementation and theory behind CS and explored different programming paradigms. HTDP is like highschool pre-trig exercises.

>>10188 >>10189 >>10190 http://www.sicpdistilled.com

who /dead tree version/ here?

>>10209 me, I bought it about a month ago with a couple of other books. Reading through it now.

>>10209 I have a hard copy

Is it me or does Louis Reasoner get more and more inventive regarding bug creation as the book goes on?

I really want to take the plunge and read SICP. I'm a senior in college so I have a lot to learn, and a lot of experiences people have with the book are motivating[1]. [1] For example, https://github.com/ivanjovanovic/sicp

Just got done reading the SICP and it was great. I skipped most of the exercises, though, because I'm a lazy soykaf . I'd realy recommend everyone to read it, as it provides great insights into the inner workings of programming languages. Especially chapters 4 and 5 were incredible.

>>10210 >tfw I own both the Yuki plushie and the dead tree version of SICP. >>10200 I actually downloaded this book five minutes before seeing your post. I'll go through this.

>>10225 >tfw no yuki plushy where 2 cop??

>>10226 I got mine at an anime convention.

>>10228 Same here man.

>>10214 Louis, (or it might be Ben) is correct at least once. I remember being very confused because I thought I was being led to find a logical error, but there was none. >>10222 The exercises are fantastic, I'm getting a lot out of them. Some are very difficult though. Almost wish we had some kind of SICP support group.

Where did you guys get a physical copy of SICP? All the copies i've seen on ebay are around $80 or something crazy like that.

>>10234 theyre on amazon for like 30bux

>>10234 I bought it from the publisher at https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/structure-and-interpretation-computer-programs There were having a sale on all computer science books a couple of months back.

Does anybody find the Chapter 1 exercises difficult due to the math and thinking in an entirely new way? I've heard that the exercises get "easier" as you go on. Is this true?

>>10222 If you skipped the exercises, you are not done yet. >>10241 There's less maths after the first chapter.

Is reading How to Design Programs redundant after SICP? I was thinking of doing both, for fun.

>>10209 Reporting in.

>>10267 I really want to get mine signed.

>>10208 This looks pretty gud.

>>10268 Same, do I have to go to MIT (or I guess Google, since one of the authors does research there now)?

>>10209 I want one. How much it cost?

>>10308 $40~ on Amazon right now I think. HTDP is like $80 ~_~

What is you guys' Scheme environment? Seems that the easiest one for a noob like me is Dr Racket.

>>10317 emacs + geiser http://nongnu.org/geiser/

>>10317 I use emacs(like everyone else here), but I've hop over to Dr.Racket if I'm stuck, the step-through is amazing and the variable-arrow-indicator thing is has are amazing for figuring out weird scoping for closures.

>>10317 I like how his outfit matches the sign. It's fate.

>>10327 Well, it's because he works at Target. Uniform there is red shirt.

>>10327 "It's like poetry, it rhymes."

>>10319 Same here.

Can I start it without knowing soykaf about programming aside from some Pascal/python stuff?

>>10346 Absolutely.

>>10346 It's assumed that the reader has no prior programming experience. SICP was a first-year course at MIT.

>>10346 SICP is perhaps the best introduction to programming for someone with no experience

I am obsessed with the book's cover art. I use it as my avatar in almost everything

Am I the only one here that's actually watched the lectures? No one ever talks about these, but they're equally great. https://archive.org/details/MIT_Structure_of_Computer_Programs_1986/

I'm thinking of buying SICP and working along with the video lectures. Should I get the 1st edition which will match the lectures perfectly or the 2nd edition which has updated text?

>>10172 I did it with VBA because that all I have at my underemployment. Even hacked together a lambda class and various other object to represent functions.

>>10404 Just get the 2nd one and watch the lectures even if they don't match up 100%,

>>10411 Well the 1st edition is actually cheaper by about $20. Would you still pick your original answer with this knowledge?

Here's a really nice, modernized rendering of SICP in HTML5. Better typography and responsive so it's easy to read on a phone. https://sarabander.github.io/sicp/html/

http://paste.lisp.org/display/151208/raw

>>10834 >>10834 >>10846 These are wonderful. Thank you.

Here's part one of an article series talking about good computer, programming and math books. Dude seems passionate about his books: http://www.catonmat.net/blog/top-100-books-part-one/ sadly, he's only at part 4 (= 20 titles) and that was quite a while ago. He originally intended to talk about a 100 books

>>10850 oops wrong thread. meant to go into the book one. >>190

>>9994 The Ackerman function really turned me off of it, didn't touch it since.

>>10914 I too think that's an ugly excercise, or maybe a very enthrilling one way beyond my level. Skip it. The others are not to bad (except, perhaps for the pascal triangle one)

>>9994 No, but I read 8 chapters of Learn You a Haskell which took me three days. It was very easy to learn.

Anyone else think How to Design Programs is a better book than SICP?

>>10968 I'm planning on doing that after SICP ^^ >>10965 Uh, the two are completely different kind of books.

>>10994 >Uh, the two are completely different kind of books. Yeah but it still helps you to get another view on how programming can be done. It learned me the principles of functional programming... or the basics atleast.

Mod on Lainchan /tech/ deleted my thread. Maybe this place is more "chill". I won't spam up the thread with the contest rules which you can find on the VN thread, on the /tech/ page on my home chan. You can also email me for the contest rules if you like. tl;dr draw some characters and win cash prizes. $10 or $25 depending on the character, and a +$100 Grand Prize for the best artwork.

Making progress. I don't know why people say this book ins't "practical". It's teaching me a lot about abstraction.

>>11021

>>11204 Very kawaii, but to enter you must email your entry and it must be an original work. Mio Naganohara is from Nichijou, this is a very recognizable existing character. Please read the contest rules. Contest closes December 31, 2015. If you don't provide a name/address to mail your winnings then you must reply to my email in January 2016 to claim your winnings, otherwise the money will roll over into the 2nd contest. So far there 60 days left in the Contest. There have been zero entries so far. There is as much as $365 in prizes waiting to be claimed.

SICP is literally a meme book. Art of Computer Programming is far more informative.

>>11328 being a maym in no way discounts the fact that it's truly great nor does the existence of other wonderful books everyone should surly read both

>>10034 I second this statement.

>>11329 The reason it's a meme book is because people still tell others to read it despite getting torn a new one almost 30 years ago. http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/dat/miranda/wadler87.pdf

>>11335 I think that an advanced type system is likely too complicated for an Intro to CS course. Remember SICP was written to be an introduction to programming. SICP also covers plain imperative programming

>>11335 >opinions.pdf The actual problems have been fixed in the second edition of SICP, the rest is just Wadler being salty because some electronic engineers were better at teaching programming than mathematicians.

>>11335 >one guy didnt like the book you are right, that means its useless and the many people that have learned from it and enjoyed it are wrong

I always wanted to read it but I never found a physical copy in italian.

>>11469 There isn't an italian edition of SICP, but you can get an english copy for cheap on the net or just read it online; there are also video lectures on youtube.

do you guys know where can I buy it without euthanizing my wallet?

>>11592 >Why can't I buy a luxury item cheaply? Come on man, it's free online.

Finished Chapter 1 yesterday. Pretty good, though I had to remember/learn some math. How's the rest of the book compared to it?

>>11592 https://sarabander.github.io/sicp/ It's like 40 USD in eBay, too. >>11597 It'll blow you away.

>>11597 Chapter's 1 and 2 form their own section. They teach you scheme and basic design. Chapter 3 complicates programming with state, chapter 4 is about designing eval functions to make new languages, and chapter 5 is about assembly or something. I'm not entirely sure about that last one; I've only read up to chapter 4.

>>11021 >>11327 cringe

>>11607 The main theme is compiling.

>>11327 What about this one?

I took an introduction course to C last semester and realized I'm interesting in programming. Let's say I dedicate about 5 hours a week towards working through SCIP. About how long would it take me to finish it? Is it the right thing for me to do considering my only real experience is that course I took?

>>11772 Eh, you'll probably be done in around a semester's time. It was made for a college course, after all. If that's too long for you, then don't bother. You really need to watch the lectures, too. I tried working through the exercises without it, and after watching them it's so much easier. But it's time consuming. Around 2 hours for the whole week's lecture (there's 2 a week)

>>11791 Thanks, Anon. I will try my hardest to keep up.

Orderer it through Abebooks after pondering if it was worth reading and practicing in my situation (archeologist student, wannabe programmer and data scientist enthusiast, no skills in math or advanced programming). I'll see if it's a waste of time. For what I read I enjoyed Learn You a Haskell even if it's kind of useless for the moment (beside being familiar with list related operations).

>>9994 Got through the first four sections this last month. I had borrowed the first edition from the book from my school library, but its deadline ended today so I returned it. I plan to follow the last chapter online. It won't be as comfortable as reading the book, but I don't think it will be that much of a problem. It was quite enlightening though, especially compared to the babby Java courses I'm enduring right now. It teaches you how to think and develop a plan of attack for different types of problems.

>>11819 It assumes University level maths, but nothing else. I got through it without the best maths knowledge, I had a learn a lot of things by looking them up, but it was fine in the end.