5 ms·

On the other hand, I've been building languages for a few years, and I never got anything useful out of that book. If you open it and feel dumb, don't worry, it

On the other hand, I've been building languages for a few years, and I never got anything useful out of that book. If you open it and feel dumb, don't worry, it's not just you. MIT and especially books from MIT are held on a pedestal. If you can't understand them or don't feel like pursuing them, just find a different book.

tonyg 9y ago
I got a lot out of "Essentials of Programming Languages" (2nd edition, at the time) by Friedman, Wand and Haynes. It has a great quote from Hal Abelson in the foreword, too: > Perhaps the whole distinction between program and programming language is a misleading idea, and future programmers will see themselves not as writing programs in particular, but as creating new languages for each new application.
- nv-vn 9y ago
  Yes I absolutely loved that book and it served as a great introduction
giancarlostoro 9y ago
Any suggestions as opposed to that book? I would appreciate it. :)
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  The art of the interpreter: http://repository.readscheme.org/ftp/papers/ai-lab-pubs/AIM-453.pdf http://repository.readscheme.org/ftp/papers/ai-lab-pubs/AIM-... On lisp: https://www.lurklurk.org/onlisp/onlisp.pdf https://www.lurklurk.org/onlisp/onlisp.pdf Mainly the key is to start tinkering, rather than jump from book to book. Just start with a very informal v1 and start hacking stuff together. When you run into a design dead-end, you'll know it because it will become increasingly hard to make forward progress. And that's the tricky situation. When you run into a design dead end, what do you do? Books! :) And that's where SICP might end up useful. Or think about the problem really hard, and write down the answer. I've occasionally pulled that off. Oh, I thought of one other suggestion: linkers and loaders. It's another classic. And unlike all the other references, there's no Lisp. Two more: Linkers, Ian Taylor: https://www.docdroid.net/2L1IZ5y/linkers.pdf https://www.docdroid.net/2L1IZ5y/linkers.pdf Assemblers: https://www.docdroid.net/2tgkwNI/assemadvertisasl.pdf https://www.docdroid.net/2tgkwNI/assemadvertisasl.pdf
  - vram22 9y ago
    >linkers and loaders Do you mean the book by John Levine? I had read it, it was good.
- marcpaq 9y ago
  I hope this helps: https://github.com/marcpaq/b1fipl https://github.com/marcpaq/b1fipl I collect single-file language implementations. None in my collection (so far) use Lua, but I'm always on the lookout.
  - UncleEntity 9y ago
    Minischeme (can be found on github and elsewhere) could go on your list. I found a copy of the original public-domain code a while back and have been hacking on it here and there, mostly pulling in fixes from tinyscheme.
- kej 9y ago
  You might like How to Design Programs [1], which was specifically written to address some perceived shortcomings in SICP. [1] http://htdp.org http://htdp.org (seems to be down right now, but you can also find the near-complete draft for the second edition at http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/ http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/ )
- nickpsecurity 9y ago
  I second HtDP for both its material and fact that it has batteries-including, GUI-based tooling to go with it in form of Racket Scheme. Once you know it, you can approach the other resources much better. You can also use your familiarity with macros/DSL's to prototype features you find interesting from other languages in Scheme for your own programs. You can experiment with different styles since the LISP's are among the easiest to do multi-paradigm languages in. Lastly, you can even embed low-level, imperative constructs in DSL's to get benefits of LISP when doing efficient, unsafe coding much like Galois does for Haskell and C with their Ivory language. sillysaurus3 is right about the MIT books being held on pedestals. It's not just them but happens with lots of "elite" colleges. There's usually much better books for learning. Now, where I disagree is that SICP is a good book with plenty of value in it for people that know Scheme. I loved reading all the sections on deriving interpreters. It was so clean-looking compared to what I did in imperative languages. It's just best to learn programming and Scheme elsewhere first.
- UncleEntity 9y ago
  I think the thing that made it all click for me was learning how Pratt parsers work, easy to get something up and running in a jiffy while just playing around -- especially if you play around in python. Tons of blog posts on the subject these days. My current parser fetish is Earley parsers but they're a bit more complicated to get from (possibly multiple) parse trees to an AST you can do something with, still trying to grok how that all works. Probably doesn't help I've been playing with a C++ grammar in my experiments.
- fiddlerwoaroof 9y ago
  Christian Queinniec’s “Lisp in Small Pieces” (LiSP) has always intrigued me: it contains a sequence of interpreters and compilers for scheme-like languages that demonstrate a variety of ways of implementing languages.
fsloth 9y ago
"I never got anything useful out of that book" Everyone to his own taste, but I think that is just short selling the book. I had no problems in starting to convert the lisp evaluator described in the book to C++ after only a few years of programming experience and I'm not an ace programmer. It was not straightforward, but it was not intimidating either. I did it for fun, not as a compulsory exercise. Specifically, Chapter 4 (Metalinguistic abstraction)[1], starting on 4.1 [2] Sure, you need to figure out that you need to tokenize strings to symbols, and do recursive descent parse stage or such to push the token/symbol list into hierarchical lists. But that's precisely the sort of thing that I feel figuring out has made me a better programmer. The key was that I knew the solutions had to be simple, so I sought simple solutions. Yes, I agree, the book could have verbatim explanation - "hey, after you know some Scheme go to chapter 4, where we give you a damn good literate programming based exposition of a scheme interpreter." - and since it doesn't, I do think your critique does have pedagogical merit. I remember leafing through the book and marking stuff up, trying to figure it out, until I realized it was standing there in front of my eyes the whole time. My paper copy is quite dog-eared by now. [1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-25.html#%_chap_4 https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-25.htm... [2] https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-26.html https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-26.htm...
- bch 9y ago
  >> "I never got anything useful out of that book" > Everyone to his own taste, but I think that is just short selling the book. I had no problems in starting to convert the lisp evaluator described in the book to C++ after only a few years of programming experience and I'm not an ace programmer. @sillysaurus3 just made that book more accessible to everybody by giving them a guilt-free exit, based on experienced results, and your first instinct is to pull a quote out of context and explain why their personal experience is “wrong”?
  - fsloth 9y ago
    I'm sorry. I was not trying to be confrontational. Sillysaurus said he did not see much merit in perusing the book after professing some experience in language implementation, and I felt an answer based on personal learning was in order as a counterpoint. Good Books, that actually teach something and mean something are exceedingly rare... this quality, is of course often quite personal. The concept of 'guilt' when abandoning a book is completely foreign to me. I presume it is a facet of poor self esteem? This is quite useless as a concept and people need to find their own intellectual feet. Not all need to dig the same things. If some weird book some unknown dudes in the internets glorify feel useless to me I just dump the book without a second thought. I don't have the time to become an expert in every subject, so I should only investigate those concepts that arouse a personal feeling of beauty. Doing brainy things "just because you imagine it makes you look smart" is counterproductive.
cat199 9y ago
I would probably have 'opened and felt dumb' as well - However, the recorded lectures are quite illuminating: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-spring-2005/video-lectures/ https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu... also, this is more a 'computing philosophy' sort of course

tonyg 9y ago

I got a lot out of "Essentials of Programming Languages" (2nd edition, at the time) by Friedman, Wand and Haynes. It has a great quote from Hal Abelson in the foreword, too: > Perhaps the whole distinction between program and programming language is a misleading idea, and future programmers will see themselves not as writing programs in particular, but as creating new languages for each new application.

nv-vn 9y ago
Yes I absolutely loved that book and it served as a great introduction

giancarlostoro 9y ago

Any suggestions as opposed to that book? I would appreciate it. :)

sillysaurus3 9y ago
The art of the interpreter: http://repository.readscheme.org/ftp/papers/ai-lab-pubs/AIM-453.pdf http://repository.readscheme.org/ftp/papers/ai-lab-pubs/AIM-... On lisp: https://www.lurklurk.org/onlisp/onlisp.pdf https://www.lurklurk.org/onlisp/onlisp.pdf Mainly the key is to start tinkering, rather than jump from book to book. Just start with a very informal v1 and start hacking stuff together. When you run into a design dead-end, you'll know it because it will become increasingly hard to make forward progress. And that's the tricky situation. When you run into a design dead end, what do you do? Books! :) And that's where SICP might end up useful. Or think about the problem really hard, and write down the answer. I've occasionally pulled that off. Oh, I thought of one other suggestion: linkers and loaders. It's another classic. And unlike all the other references, there's no Lisp. Two more: Linkers, Ian Taylor: https://www.docdroid.net/2L1IZ5y/linkers.pdf https://www.docdroid.net/2L1IZ5y/linkers.pdf Assemblers: https://www.docdroid.net/2tgkwNI/assemadvertisasl.pdf https://www.docdroid.net/2tgkwNI/assemadvertisasl.pdf
- vram22 9y ago
  >linkers and loaders Do you mean the book by John Levine? I had read it, it was good.
marcpaq 9y ago
I hope this helps: https://github.com/marcpaq/b1fipl https://github.com/marcpaq/b1fipl I collect single-file language implementations. None in my collection (so far) use Lua, but I'm always on the lookout.
- UncleEntity 9y ago
  Minischeme (can be found on github and elsewhere) could go on your list. I found a copy of the original public-domain code a while back and have been hacking on it here and there, mostly pulling in fixes from tinyscheme.
kej 9y ago
You might like How to Design Programs [1], which was specifically written to address some perceived shortcomings in SICP. [1] http://htdp.org http://htdp.org (seems to be down right now, but you can also find the near-complete draft for the second edition at http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/ http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/ )
nickpsecurity 9y ago
I second HtDP for both its material and fact that it has batteries-including, GUI-based tooling to go with it in form of Racket Scheme. Once you know it, you can approach the other resources much better. You can also use your familiarity with macros/DSL's to prototype features you find interesting from other languages in Scheme for your own programs. You can experiment with different styles since the LISP's are among the easiest to do multi-paradigm languages in. Lastly, you can even embed low-level, imperative constructs in DSL's to get benefits of LISP when doing efficient, unsafe coding much like Galois does for Haskell and C with their Ivory language. sillysaurus3 is right about the MIT books being held on pedestals. It's not just them but happens with lots of "elite" colleges. There's usually much better books for learning. Now, where I disagree is that SICP is a good book with plenty of value in it for people that know Scheme. I loved reading all the sections on deriving interpreters. It was so clean-looking compared to what I did in imperative languages. It's just best to learn programming and Scheme elsewhere first.
UncleEntity 9y ago
I think the thing that made it all click for me was learning how Pratt parsers work, easy to get something up and running in a jiffy while just playing around -- especially if you play around in python. Tons of blog posts on the subject these days. My current parser fetish is Earley parsers but they're a bit more complicated to get from (possibly multiple) parse trees to an AST you can do something with, still trying to grok how that all works. Probably doesn't help I've been playing with a C++ grammar in my experiments.
fiddlerwoaroof 9y ago
Christian Queinniec’s “Lisp in Small Pieces” (LiSP) has always intrigued me: it contains a sequence of interpreters and compilers for scheme-like languages that demonstrate a variety of ways of implementing languages.

fsloth 9y ago

"I never got anything useful out of that book" Everyone to his own taste, but I think that is just short selling the book. I had no problems in starting to convert the lisp evaluator described in the book to C++ after only a few years of programming experience and I'm not an ace programmer. It was not straightforward, but it was not intimidating either. I did it for fun, not as a compulsory exercise. Specifically, Chapter 4 (Metalinguistic abstraction)[1], starting on 4.1 [2] Sure, you need to figure out that you need to tokenize strings to symbols, and do recursive descent parse stage or such to push the token/symbol list into hierarchical lists. But that's precisely the sort of thing that I feel figuring out has made me a better programmer. The key was that I knew the solutions had to be simple, so I sought simple solutions. Yes, I agree, the book could have verbatim explanation - "hey, after you know some Scheme go to chapter 4, where we give you a damn good literate programming based exposition of a scheme interpreter." - and since it doesn't, I do think your critique does have pedagogical merit. I remember leafing through the book and marking stuff up, trying to figure it out, until I realized it was standing there in front of my eyes the whole time. My paper copy is quite dog-eared by now. [1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-25.html#%_chap_4 https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-25.htm... [2] https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-26.html https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-26.htm...

bch 9y ago
>> "I never got anything useful out of that book" > Everyone to his own taste, but I think that is just short selling the book. I had no problems in starting to convert the lisp evaluator described in the book to C++ after only a few years of programming experience and I'm not an ace programmer. @sillysaurus3 just made that book more accessible to everybody by giving them a guilt-free exit, based on experienced results, and your first instinct is to pull a quote out of context and explain why their personal experience is “wrong”?
- fsloth 9y ago
  I'm sorry. I was not trying to be confrontational. Sillysaurus said he did not see much merit in perusing the book after professing some experience in language implementation, and I felt an answer based on personal learning was in order as a counterpoint. Good Books, that actually teach something and mean something are exceedingly rare... this quality, is of course often quite personal. The concept of 'guilt' when abandoning a book is completely foreign to me. I presume it is a facet of poor self esteem? This is quite useless as a concept and people need to find their own intellectual feet. Not all need to dig the same things. If some weird book some unknown dudes in the internets glorify feel useless to me I just dump the book without a second thought. I don't have the time to become an expert in every subject, so I should only investigate those concepts that arouse a personal feeling of beauty. Doing brainy things "just because you imagine it makes you look smart" is counterproductive.

cat199 9y ago

I would probably have 'opened and felt dumb' as well - However, the recorded lectures are quite illuminating: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-spring-2005/video-lectures/ https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu... also, this is more a 'computing philosophy' sort of course