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There is no Python-based version, Abelson and Sussman only produced one SICP based on Lisp. It is unfortunate that there are other courses by people not associ

There is no Python-based version, Abelson and Sussman only produced one SICP based on Lisp. It is unfortunate that there are other courses by people not associated with Abelson and Sussman that have kept the same name but not the material. It is misleading to refer to these as "SICP" as they lack pretty much everything that made SICP great. SICP works on _multiple_ levels, it is not [just] a book about Lisp or a book about programming. It is this "emergent" quality that it has that makes it a masterpiece. Someone wrote that "Philosophy is any culture’s pole of maximum abstraction, or intrinsically experimental intelligence, expressing the liberation of cognitive capabilities from immediate practical application, and their testing against ‘ultimate’ problems at the horizon of understanding." In this sense, SICP is a supremely philosophical book.

aidos 8y ago
Do you need to have a solid foundation in lisp to understand it or is it approachable for experienced software developers in other domains?
- enitihas 8y ago
  You don't need any foundation in lisp to understand it. The exercises may seem a little hard, but as long as you go through those, you will gain a lot.
- bambataa 8y ago
  None at all. What's great about SICP is that it starts from pretty much first principles and builds everything gradually on top of them. Things like managing state etc are presented as a very natural progression.
- Turing_Machine 8y ago
  Not at all. It was written as an introductory text for freshman computer science students with no prior exposure to programming (much less a Lisp or Lisp-like language). Just keep in mind that the students in question were at MIT. :-) The book gets very deep (note some of the things that Paul Graham says in his review, and note who is saying those things). Be prepared to expend a lot of challenging brainwork to get through it, but nope, it doesn't rely on previous knowledge of Scheme. One of the many nice features of Scheme (and lispy languages in general) is there isn't a lot of syntax and so on to learn in the first place. (procedure argument1 argument2...argumentn) is pretty much it.
  - merolish 8y ago
    Even at MIT a lot of people struggled with it because they threw so much at you so quickly, and it's since been replaced with a Python-based intro course.
    - olavk 8y ago
      It is definitely challenging and I'm not sure it is appropriate for beginners unless they are geniuses. But the challenging part is not learning Scheme (which is even simpler than Python if not quite as nice to read), the challenge is it works through a lot of computational topics (implementing an interpreter, lazy evaluation, an object system, a logic language, etc.) in a quite compact format.
      - tdsamardzhiev 8y ago
        MIT EECS freshmen aren't exactly beginners. It's not the right book for 19-year-olds who want to learn programming. It's the book for 19-year-olds who have been programming since primary school. A complete beginner will struggle terribly, and s/he'd still miss most of what the book is really trying to teach. Lately, MIT has been investing heavily into obtaining a more cosmopolitan image, so ditching a course aims to scratch the itch of hardcore nerds -- while disappointing -- wasn't unexpected, I guess.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
dreamcompiler 8y ago
Studying SICP in Python is kind of like reading the Odyssey via Google Translate. You'll get the gist of it, but you won't feel the earth move. Python is a "Lisp lite" and the parts of Lisp that Python leaves out or cripples are incredibly important.
- armitron 8y ago
  Mostly agree but: Lua is a Lisp-lite, Ruby maybe a Lisp-lite, Python? No way, I'd go as far as say that Python is antithetical to the Lisp philosophy and yes, I know Norvig has claimed something similar in the past. It's still inaccurate and wrong. In an interview, Norvig pretty much admitted that popular appeal is more important to him than the inherent superiority [which he of course acknowledges] of the philosophy behind Lisp.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    i you squint you'll see CLOS
    - Gorgor 8y ago
      In Python’s object system? How so?
      - agumonkey 8y ago
        Access to metaclasses. Whenever I watch a python metaclass talk I can't help but thinking 'welcome to CLOS guys'
        armitron 8y ago
        CLOS is metacircular, implemented in itself. Moreover, it decouples state (classes and instances) from protocol (generic functions and methods) and through the MOP allows you to reprogram every aspect of its behavior. Python's object system suffers from the same ailments that Python itself does. It's an amalgamation of various hacks, some obviously inspired by Common Lisp [1], others made up on the spot in order to make everything "fit" together. In order to best see this, browse CPython's source and find how metaclasses are implemented. Then imagine what you would have to do if you wanted to radically change Python's object system. Contrast with the Common Lisp MOP. [1] Here is Guido talking about Python's metaobject protocol. Taking into account everything it lacks and how it's implemented, it's not really a metaobject protocol in the CLOS sense, but it's enlightening to read GvR's description of his "aha!" moments in the slides -- which he came upon when he read "The Art of the Metaobject Protocol" -- and then realize that he simply picked very few of the ideas from it whilst completely missing the essence: http://laser.inf.ethz.ch/2012/slides/vanRossum/laser-mop.pdf http://laser.inf.ethz.ch/2012/slides/vanRossum/laser-mop.pdf So yes, Python has metaclasses but metaclasses are only ~5% of what makes CLOS (and AMOP) iconoclastic. For the rest, read "The Art of the Metaobject Protocol" [2]. This should convince you that Python is really nothing like Lisp and the philosophy of metaprogramming that Lisp espouses is dumbed down and made pretty much powerless (in a similar way, interactive programming) in Python. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_the_Metaobject_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_the_Metaobject_Prot...

aidos 8y ago

Do you need to have a solid foundation in lisp to understand it or is it approachable for experienced software developers in other domains?

enitihas 8y ago
You don't need any foundation in lisp to understand it. The exercises may seem a little hard, but as long as you go through those, you will gain a lot.
bambataa 8y ago
None at all. What's great about SICP is that it starts from pretty much first principles and builds everything gradually on top of them. Things like managing state etc are presented as a very natural progression.
Turing_Machine 8y ago
Not at all. It was written as an introductory text for freshman computer science students with no prior exposure to programming (much less a Lisp or Lisp-like language). Just keep in mind that the students in question were at MIT. :-) The book gets very deep (note some of the things that Paul Graham says in his review, and note who is saying those things). Be prepared to expend a lot of challenging brainwork to get through it, but nope, it doesn't rely on previous knowledge of Scheme. One of the many nice features of Scheme (and lispy languages in general) is there isn't a lot of syntax and so on to learn in the first place. (procedure argument1 argument2...argumentn) is pretty much it.
- merolish 8y ago
  Even at MIT a lot of people struggled with it because they threw so much at you so quickly, and it's since been replaced with a Python-based intro course.
  - olavk 8y ago
    It is definitely challenging and I'm not sure it is appropriate for beginners unless they are geniuses. But the challenging part is not learning Scheme (which is even simpler than Python if not quite as nice to read), the challenge is it works through a lot of computational topics (implementing an interpreter, lazy evaluation, an object system, a logic language, etc.) in a quite compact format.
    - tdsamardzhiev 8y ago
      MIT EECS freshmen aren't exactly beginners. It's not the right book for 19-year-olds who want to learn programming. It's the book for 19-year-olds who have been programming since primary school. A complete beginner will struggle terribly, and s/he'd still miss most of what the book is really trying to teach. Lately, MIT has been investing heavily into obtaining a more cosmopolitan image, so ditching a course aims to scratch the itch of hardcore nerds -- while disappointing -- wasn't unexpected, I guess.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

dreamcompiler 8y ago

Studying SICP in Python is kind of like reading the Odyssey via Google Translate. You'll get the gist of it, but you won't feel the earth move. Python is a "Lisp lite" and the parts of Lisp that Python leaves out or cripples are incredibly important.

armitron 8y ago
Mostly agree but: Lua is a Lisp-lite, Ruby maybe a Lisp-lite, Python? No way, I'd go as far as say that Python is antithetical to the Lisp philosophy and yes, I know Norvig has claimed something similar in the past. It's still inaccurate and wrong. In an interview, Norvig pretty much admitted that popular appeal is more important to him than the inherent superiority [which he of course acknowledges] of the philosophy behind Lisp.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  i you squint you'll see CLOS
  - Gorgor 8y ago
    In Python’s object system? How so?
    - agumonkey 8y ago
      Access to metaclasses. Whenever I watch a python metaclass talk I can't help but thinking 'welcome to CLOS guys'
      - armitron 8y ago
        CLOS is metacircular, implemented in itself. Moreover, it decouples state (classes and instances) from protocol (generic functions and methods) and through the MOP allows you to reprogram every aspect of its behavior. Python's object system suffers from the same ailments that Python itself does. It's an amalgamation of various hacks, some obviously inspired by Common Lisp [1], others made up on the spot in order to make everything "fit" together. In order to best see this, browse CPython's source and find how metaclasses are implemented. Then imagine what you would have to do if you wanted to radically change Python's object system. Contrast with the Common Lisp MOP. [1] Here is Guido talking about Python's metaobject protocol. Taking into account everything it lacks and how it's implemented, it's not really a metaobject protocol in the CLOS sense, but it's enlightening to read GvR's description of his "aha!" moments in the slides -- which he came upon when he read "The Art of the Metaobject Protocol" -- and then realize that he simply picked very few of the ideas from it whilst completely missing the essence: http://laser.inf.ethz.ch/2012/slides/vanRossum/laser-mop.pdf http://laser.inf.ethz.ch/2012/slides/vanRossum/laser-mop.pdf So yes, Python has metaclasses but metaclasses are only ~5% of what makes CLOS (and AMOP) iconoclastic. For the rest, read "The Art of the Metaobject Protocol" [2]. This should convince you that Python is really nothing like Lisp and the philosophy of metaprogramming that Lisp espouses is dumbed down and made pretty much powerless (in a similar way, interactive programming) in Python. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_the_Metaobject_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_the_Metaobject_Prot...