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this series of books has an unusual pedagogical style, with a big "bang for the buck" in terms of building up complex systems from basic steps there is zero fl
by drcode 4y ago
this series of books has an unusual pedagogical style, with a big "bang for the buck" in terms of building up complex systems from basic steps
there is zero fluff, almost zero narration
the books are basically just input output pairs of "now do this, and now that happens"
they are basically a sort of brain data dump for people who can think with computer code
- rootusrootus 4y ago> people who can think with computer code In particular, Scheme. If your language of choice is, say, Python, then you'll want to get a primer on Scheme before reading this particular book. Maybe by starting at the beginning of the series.
- leoc 4y agoGuy Steele's keynote talk at Dan Friedman's 60th-birthday academic festival, "Dan Friedman--Cool Ideas", gives lots of the background: https://youtu.be/IHP7P_HlcBk?t=2198 https://youtu.be/IHP7P_HlcBk?t=2198 . Apparently the format was originally a parody or adaptation of that of an IBM Fortran instruction manual based on Skinnerian programmed-instruction ideas.
- leoc 4y agoYou can see the FORTRAN texts on Bitsavers: https://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/1130/lang/ https://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/1130/lang/