3 ms·

I don’t quite get the cult status of SICP. I read it and it’s a fine beginner programming book, but nothing more.

• jgon 2y ago
  Just so we're clear, this is a "beginner programming book" that has you create a scheme interpreter, then a register machine simulator, then a compiler out of your interpreter that will then have its compiled code run on the register machine simulator, by the final chapter. This is probably the part where you'd step up and post a link to your repo with solutions to the exercises to back up your talk, but generally I only see this sort of casual dismissal from people who haven't actually worked through the book.
  • dbtc 2y ago
    I commend your righteous indignation. Made me smile. Flame on!
    • becquerel 2y ago
      One aspires to be a hater of such high caliber.
  • veqq 2y ago
    Concrete Abstractions, Schematics of Computation and others from the era (also using Scheme) covered similar ground (and went far further!) SICP is denser and sticks to theory forgoing databases, operating systems and actually implementing scheme in assembly.
• liontwist 2y ago
  I don’t understand this comment. If you master the material you know more than 90% of engineers in the field.
  • aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    > If you master the material you know more than 90% of engineers in the field. Telling someone that he/she is smarter than 90% of the people is not a praise. :-)
    • bdangubic 2y ago
      amen… just look at 90% of people at the DMV :-)