The Spirit in the Computer
Report End

Studying SICP

As you can see, my interest arose more from an interest in Lisp rather than a particular interest in studying computer programming, which is the real subject of SICP. I’ll leave it until my next update to report more fully on how I’m finding Lisp: so far, I have been enjoying the language, but the development environments seem primitive—and I haven’t begun to investigate library support.

The book itself is written with intelligence and wit. I read quite a few computing books but don’t often have the time or motivation to work through the exercises. The ACCU project helps with the motivation, and my efforts are being repaid in full.

Resources

The ACCU website is at: http://www.accu.org

The primary project resource is the email list itself: http://www.accu.org/mailman/listinfo/accu-mentored-sicp

The book, “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs”, by Abelson and Sussman, is published by MIT Press. The full text is available online at: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html

Videos of the accompanying lectures can be downloaded from: http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/

Schemers.org, an improper list of Scheme resources is at: http://www.schemers.org

Finally, more information on this mentored developer project can be found on the project Wiki: http://wiki.wordaligned.org/sicp

References

“From Mechanism to Method: A Fair Share, Part 1”, Kevlin Henney, http://www.ddj.com/dept/cpp/184403842

“Hackers & Painters”, Paul Graham, http://www.paulgraham.com/hackpaint.html

“How To Become A Hacker”, Eric Steven Raymond, http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

Thanks

Especial thanks to Mike Small for running this project, and for providing some of the raw material which went into this report. Thanks also to the other members of the mailing list.



<< Not all Languages are Equal | ^ Progress Report