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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 l

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.
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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.

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