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I just read through the first bunch of pages of both this book and SICP. I'm familiar with Lisp and I've been a programmer for many years, but I've never really
by DougWebb 15y ago
I just read through the first bunch of pages of both this book and SICP. I'm familiar with Lisp and I've been a programmer for many years, but I've never really been comfortable with Lisp. I have to say that SICP's approach seems much easier to learn from than this book's approach. Just a few pages in, and I felt like I understood how Lisp programs are structured well enough to figure out how any Lisp program works. The diagrams and exercises in this book just seem distracting and too verbose for the concepts they're trying to convey.
It may be a learning-style thing.
- calpaterson 15y agoYes, it is more verbose. I don't think that SICP is a good introductory book (for all the well known reasons), though obviously I didn't know this at the time.
- octopus 15y agoI think you've found the Lisp found in SICP more easier simply because Scheme (the Lisp flavour used in SICP) is purposely more concise than Common Lisp (the language from the this book). Some teachers claim they could teach you Scheme in about one hour (see the excellent course of Brian Harvey). Common Lisp is a different kind of beast.