If folks are interested in having a person to talk to while doing SICP, we're doing it in the iPad app we released last Thursday. We were going to do a Show HN, but hey, HN's already talking SICP!
The setup is basically like private music lessons. We pair you with a somewhat more advanced student also doing SICP. The deal is to
(1) Work on SICP by yourself during the week
(2) Once a week, discuss the material with your more advanced partner. The app builds in a videochat + whiteboard communication tool (you can see it in the app screenshots).
(3) When you get about a month in, also start discussing with someone who is just starting out. When you help that person understand, it very much improves your own understanding.
Basically, it gives you good discussion with people who are genuinely interested in SICP.
Folks, you don't need proprietary software or an iThing to get help with SICP. Hop on #scheme on freenode and check out http://schemers.org/ for resources.
That's an excellent idea. I'd be very interested in having this sort of help, and later passing it forward.
The actually app however seems to only run on one make of tablet (that I don't happen to own). I could be wrong, but it seems to me that most people'll be doing SICP exercises on a real computer, rather than a tablet. Why did you decide not to do, say, a webapp - or even to just assign the pairs and let them use whatever communication medium they have in common (skype, hangouts, IRC, whatever)?
Cool idea, will be curious to see how it goes (don't own iStuff so can't directly participate).
Live remote video-learning, I've found, tends to require a good friend of comparable skill level to work. If you discover that strangers can make this work sustainably, that's definitely interesting and important.
These can be good precursors before starting on SICP. I have to say, though, that I have never felt comfortable with LISP's syntax. The parentheses and the prefix notation are convenient for the parser, not the programmer. Pyret http://www.pyret.org/index.html might be a step in the right direction.
I am a big fan of HtDP, and Felleisen's in-progress 2nd edition of HTDP is here: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/ . It contains many improvements over the first (completeness however is not among them).
That said, HtDP's focus is very different from SICP, and I would not sequence one before the other. HtDP focuses on a methodology for writing robust maintainable software. It emphasizes specifications and testing and functional procedures.
SICP is focused on computer science and emphasizes much higher levels of abstraction - e.g. the *nix signal processing model, logic programming, constraint programming, stack machines and dealing with concurrency. It is more directly an introduction to Computer Science [despite Ableson's questioning the utility of the term 'computer science'] whereas HtDP is more of an introduction to the practice of programming.
Philosophically, SICP is ok with the idea of placing the student in over their head, e.g. the digital logic simulator and various mathematical examples treat digital logic and mathematics and banking as domain knowledge that the programmer might not have, but does not need in order to create sound abstractions.
[And Kickzales's course on Coursera was I awesome, I took the first version last summer.]
For anyone interested, Paul Snyder and I are running a SICP study group going on right now. We also have online and in person meetings in Philadelphia and King of Prussia. We are currently doing one minor section every month, which averages out to roughly one homework question every 3 days.
For anyone interested we will help you get setup and started, no prior programming needed.
We are running section 1.3 this month, so there is not much to catch up! Also, anyone who wants to work it their own pace is welcome too!
When I first read the title/url I got excited. I remember on the thoughbot podcast, Ben Orenstein spoke about going to Cape Cod with some people to go through SICP in a nice but isolated setting. I thought something like that was being organized on a larger scale...
Still a very good article, with great arguments for why the book is a must-read. Great links too. I would also include something easy like Realm of Racket (or Land of Lisp) as a good first-date before shacking up with SICP.
Hacker Retreat does look great though. Wish I had the free time to give it a try.
Can't say Berlin is an isolated setting, nor does it feel/look like Cape Cod, but it is nice - if you like cities, it's got something of everything. :) And the summer here is fantastic.
SICP is always "on" at Hacker Retreat - I've always got SICP buffers open. If you're able to work remotely from Berlin, consider coming to Batch-02 this summer.
Author here - happy to answer questions and address feedback. I suspect I didn't explain Lisp-in-Lisp as well as I need to, but maybe it's enough to get non-Lispers intrigued. :)
what about the people who did not do a math major. Is this a book they can get through?
I tried once and saw that I had to read two other books before I could even read chapter one. one for discrete mathematics and the other for calculus. do you have any tips for the people in my situation?
1 uses Robert Harper's Practical Foundations for Programming Languages (and was taught by him) and 2 uses PFPL plus Benjamin Pierce's Types and Programming Languages. Both courses have lecture notes and readings for each session as well as homework assignments with solutions which ought to make them straightforward to go through on your own.
I found these by doing some Googling and evaluating various forums/Stack Exchange posts; if anyone has any better suggestions I would love to hear them. (I haven't done SICP in depth and now, of course, I'm considering putting this plan on hold and doing SICP instead...)
Totally on a tangent, but I'd love to see a 'Hacker Retrete' style session targeted at hackers / devs that have jobs.
Something on the order of 1 or 2 weeks in length, super compressed that gives working devs a chance to learn something new or explore something outside of their normal job. I'd love to do something like this, particularly in an exotic location, but against a set amount of time that doesn't require me to quit my job.
As a coding-vacation? Or as something that blends well with remote work?
We've adjusted the format of the current Hacker Retreat to accommodate people working (remotely, on their startup, etc) - 20% of your time is committed to learning, the rest of the time is up to you. The time-span is over 2 months minimum. We're currently taking applications for the Batch-02 starting in May/June.
Super-compressed, 1-2 week retreats are something we've thought about, especially for advanced topics like data science and functional programming...may do it later, but not this summer.
Our group, the LA Computer Science Reading Group has been interested in doing SICP for a while. For those in Los Angeles who are interested in joining us, here's the link to the meetup group: http://csrg.org
I have a very specific question about starting out on SICP. A few months back, I worked through roughly half the exercises in the book. I got stuck on 2.2.4 (a picture language)[1] and was unable to run any of the examples or test any of the exercises.
Is there some prerequisite library for these exercises? Or am I missing the point and these are not actually intended to be run?
Good question - when I got to that part, I couldn't get the picture language to run either and just wrote code that I compared with other online solutions. I just took a look at the MIT Press website for their SICP code:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/code/index.html
...but don't see the code needed there to draw graphics. Eli's online solution did, I believe, manage to get graphics working with a non-MIT-Scheme Scheme. But it's not necessary to have running code here to get the benefits of the exercises (unlike later in Chapter 3 and 4!).
The article recommends mit-scheme. Anyone know how to get that working as a Sublime Text build? From what I can tell, to invoke mit-scheme on a file, you redirect stdin, a la:
mit-scheme < foo.scm
This doesn't play so nicely with the ST2 build system, which seems to assume the input will be simply be a filename arg. E.g., it's assuming you can do:
Sorry, wish I could help, I've always run MIT-Scheme on Linux. If you figure it out, please leave commentary here, on the article, and/or send me link to your blog post w/ instructions, thanks.
It doesn't really require any math… some exercises and examples do require math, but you can just skip them. The first chapter has a lot more of that than the rest. It's very much not essential.
To give an example, the hardest math I can remember is one exercise where they ask you to _prove_ the equation listed if you search for "closed form" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number .
I'm relatively sure that the point of this exercise was just to drive home that performance characteristics of a problem can be non-obvious. We just finished making an O(n) implementation of Fibonacci numbers and feel pretty good about it, but oh wait, you can actually do it in O(1).
However, to literally answer your question, the math used in exercises mostly tops out at polynomial algebra (like, adding X^2 + 3X + 1 to 3X^2 + 3), with a little bit of calculus - namely taking derivatives (and maybe integrals? I forget) of polynomials. The calculus is not used to solve a problem - rather you're implementing a program that lets the user take derivatives of polynomials.
You'll need the equivalent of 1 semester of calculus, I'd guess, including working knowledge of pre-calculus material like sums of series (sigma notation). Try poking around Amazon.com for a highly-reviewed book, or use Khan Academy content.
You might also try starting with the videos, which are more-code, less-equations. But to get maximum benefits, one must do the exercises (at least some of them), so you'll still need the book.
Much better to have a REPL handy - like order-of-magnitude better. :) The further in the book you go, the more you need to write, run, tinker and test to check your understanding(s).
if you're in London and looking for someone to share in your SICP adventure, check out the London SICP study group: http://www.meetup.com/London-SICP-Study-Group/ we just simmered down for the time being, but parallel groups are planning to start soon.
[+] [-] kenferry|12 years ago|reply
Understudy: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/understudy/id782635884
The setup is basically like private music lessons. We pair you with a somewhat more advanced student also doing SICP. The deal is to
(1) Work on SICP by yourself during the week
(2) Once a week, discuss the material with your more advanced partner. The app builds in a videochat + whiteboard communication tool (you can see it in the app screenshots).
(3) When you get about a month in, also start discussing with someone who is just starting out. When you help that person understand, it very much improves your own understanding.
Basically, it gives you good discussion with people who are genuinely interested in SICP.
We've been running it in beta for a while – see https://twitter.com/understudyapp .
[+] [-] davexunit|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SEMW|12 years ago|reply
The actually app however seems to only run on one make of tablet (that I don't happen to own). I could be wrong, but it seems to me that most people'll be doing SICP exercises on a real computer, rather than a tablet. Why did you decide not to do, say, a webapp - or even to just assign the pairs and let them use whatever communication medium they have in common (skype, hangouts, IRC, whatever)?
[+] [-] limist|12 years ago|reply
Live remote video-learning, I've found, tends to require a good friend of comparable skill level to work. If you discover that strangers can make this work sustainably, that's definitely interesting and important.
[+] [-] Snail_Commando|12 years ago|reply
Why does your app have this rating? Don't get me wrong, I love Lisps as much as the next person, but...
More seriously, is it because of the video-chat feature?
[+] [-] Orangeair|12 years ago|reply
In all honesty, though, this sounds like a really cool idea. I may check it out.
[+] [-] erokar|12 years ago|reply
These can be good precursors before starting on SICP. I have to say, though, that I have never felt comfortable with LISP's syntax. The parentheses and the prefix notation are convenient for the parser, not the programmer. Pyret http://www.pyret.org/index.html might be a step in the right direction.
[+] [-] brudgers|12 years ago|reply
That said, HtDP's focus is very different from SICP, and I would not sequence one before the other. HtDP focuses on a methodology for writing robust maintainable software. It emphasizes specifications and testing and functional procedures.
SICP is focused on computer science and emphasizes much higher levels of abstraction - e.g. the *nix signal processing model, logic programming, constraint programming, stack machines and dealing with concurrency. It is more directly an introduction to Computer Science [despite Ableson's questioning the utility of the term 'computer science'] whereas HtDP is more of an introduction to the practice of programming.
Philosophically, SICP is ok with the idea of placing the student in over their head, e.g. the digital logic simulator and various mathematical examples treat digital logic and mathematics and banking as domain knowledge that the programmer might not have, but does not need in order to create sound abstractions.
[And Kickzales's course on Coursera was I awesome, I took the first version last summer.]
[+] [-] JackMorgan|12 years ago|reply
For anyone interested we will help you get setup and started, no prior programming needed.
We are running section 1.3 this month, so there is not much to catch up! Also, anyone who wants to work it their own pace is welcome too!
http://www.meetup.com/Clojadelphia/events/172933722/
Paul hasn't put up the info for the 1.3 online session yet, join the Clojadelphia group to get updates when he does.
[+] [-] ludicast|12 years ago|reply
Still a very good article, with great arguments for why the book is a must-read. Great links too. I would also include something easy like Realm of Racket (or Land of Lisp) as a good first-date before shacking up with SICP.
Hacker Retreat does look great though. Wish I had the free time to give it a try.
[+] [-] limist|12 years ago|reply
SICP is always "on" at Hacker Retreat - I've always got SICP buffers open. If you're able to work remotely from Berlin, consider coming to Batch-02 this summer.
[+] [-] limist|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wizard_class|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jnbiche|12 years ago|reply
Something challenging yet doable for a determined independent student.
[+] [-] jcurbo|12 years ago|reply
I've been looking around for a good way to learn type theory via self-study, and my current plan is to go through these courses on my own:
1) http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/courses/typesys/ 2) http://ttic.uchicago.edu/~pl/classes/CMSC336-Winter08/
1 uses Robert Harper's Practical Foundations for Programming Languages (and was taught by him) and 2 uses PFPL plus Benjamin Pierce's Types and Programming Languages. Both courses have lecture notes and readings for each session as well as homework assignments with solutions which ought to make them straightforward to go through on your own.
There's also these Type/Category/Proof Theory Foundations videos (with Robert Harper as well): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8Ky8lYL8-Oh7awp0sqa8...
I found these by doing some Googling and evaluating various forums/Stack Exchange posts; if anyone has any better suggestions I would love to hear them. (I haven't done SICP in depth and now, of course, I'm considering putting this plan on hold and doing SICP instead...)
[+] [-] limist|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shunter|12 years ago|reply
Something on the order of 1 or 2 weeks in length, super compressed that gives working devs a chance to learn something new or explore something outside of their normal job. I'd love to do something like this, particularly in an exotic location, but against a set amount of time that doesn't require me to quit my job.
[+] [-] limist|12 years ago|reply
We've adjusted the format of the current Hacker Retreat to accommodate people working (remotely, on their startup, etc) - 20% of your time is committed to learning, the rest of the time is up to you. The time-span is over 2 months minimum. We're currently taking applications for the Batch-02 starting in May/June.
Super-compressed, 1-2 week retreats are something we've thought about, especially for advanced topics like data science and functional programming...may do it later, but not this summer.
[+] [-] zenbowman|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Strang|12 years ago|reply
Is there some prerequisite library for these exercises? Or am I missing the point and these are not actually intended to be run?
1. http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-15.html...
[+] [-] jwdunne|12 years ago|reply
Check it out here:
http://www.neilvandyke.org/racket-sicp/
[+] [-] limist|12 years ago|reply
...but don't see the code needed there to draw graphics. Eli's online solution did, I believe, manage to get graphics working with a non-MIT-Scheme Scheme. But it's not necessary to have running code here to get the benefits of the exercises (unlike later in Chapter 3 and 4!).
[+] [-] msluyter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] limist|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epsylon|12 years ago|reply
#!/bin/sh
mit-scheme < $@
[+] [-] rquantz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenferry|12 years ago|reply
To give an example, the hardest math I can remember is one exercise where they ask you to _prove_ the equation listed if you search for "closed form" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number .
I'm relatively sure that the point of this exercise was just to drive home that performance characteristics of a problem can be non-obvious. We just finished making an O(n) implementation of Fibonacci numbers and feel pretty good about it, but oh wait, you can actually do it in O(1).
However, to literally answer your question, the math used in exercises mostly tops out at polynomial algebra (like, adding X^2 + 3X + 1 to 3X^2 + 3), with a little bit of calculus - namely taking derivatives (and maybe integrals? I forget) of polynomials. The calculus is not used to solve a problem - rather you're implementing a program that lets the user take derivatives of polynomials.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] limist|12 years ago|reply
You might also try starting with the videos, which are more-code, less-equations. But to get maximum benefits, one must do the exercises (at least some of them), so you'll still need the book.
[+] [-] StevenOtto|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Mathematics
[+] [-] waa15|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zodiac|12 years ago|reply
xuanji.appspot.com/isicp/
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|12 years ago|reply
You should consider adding a TL;DR at the beginning, to explain what it is all about.
[+] [-] chiachun|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] limist|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brown9-2|12 years ago|reply
Or would it be pointless to read through the book without a REPL/command line next to it?
[+] [-] limist|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mebassett|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TempleOSV2|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mindfulness|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mindfulness|12 years ago|reply
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