Reddit reviews Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - 2nd Edition (MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)
We found 11 Reddit comments about Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - 2nd Edition (MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Thank you all for your responses! I have compiled a list of books mentioned by at least three different people below. Since some books have abbreviations (SICP) or colloquial names (Dragon Book), not to mention the occasional omission of a starting "a" or "the" this was done by hand and as a result it may contain errors.
edit: This list is now books mentioned by at least three people (was two) and contains posts up to icepack's.
edit: Updated with links to Amazon.com. These are not affiliate - Amazon was picked because they provide the most uniform way to compare books.
edit: Updated up to redline6561
TAOCP is too hard: its like one of those fantasy wishlist items: the kind of thing every computer scientist wishes they had read but never really has the time to. Some nicer books that are gold standards in their respective fields are:
CLRS (Algorithms)
SICP (Just see the top two amazon reviews)
Kernighan and Ritchie (if you want to be a pretty accomplished C programmer and have little to no real C experience before)
Since you mentioned security, Ross Anderson's Security Engineering is a fantastic read, and very easy to parse: you could read it through in less than a week and have a deeply changed view of the structural issues in security: there is little crypto in the book (for that, Schneier is the gold standard) but more discussion about protocols, where protocols fail, real-world protocols like the military classification scheme, etc. It is absolutely fantastic. If you read this and Schneier you'd have a very thorough understanding of the entire security stack.
Kleinberg and Tardos is a much easier read than CLRS when it comes to algorithms, doesn't cover as much, and is very graceful in its explanations. Personally, I love it.
Do you count SICP in favour of "books" or in favour of the internet?
Also and irrelevantly, "found from" sounds quite jarring to my admittedly non-native ears.
I've read both The Little Schemer and Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
I used both PLT Scheme/DrRacket and Chicken Scheme while going through the exercises. If you're a Windows user, DrRacket is the best one to use - Chicken is awesome but a lot more difficult to compile successfully under MinGW or Cygwin, and the ramp up time may be a turn-off to you.
I don't use Scheme in my daily job, but I really enjoyed learning it and would love to use it more. It completely changed how I think about computation.
Really? I see it on Amazon.com for $70.85, which is less than what I payed for it a while back ($75).
Make sure you are looking at this one and not this one
EDIT: I always wondered what the difference between those two was, and this discussion on Amazon answered that question.
Things may have advanced since I was doing it, but back then you would learn lex and yacc and then look at examples of existing code to figure out how to do things. I've never read "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (also known as "The Wizard Book"), but I have seen it get rave reviews decades after decade and it is still a popular book after more than 30 years so I would guess that would be a good one to start with if you want some more in-depth reading.
Since you're fuzzy on the whole "Turing Complete" concept, I wouldn't start at the toy app level. The best place for you is probably The Little Schemer with javascript transformations from http://javascript.crockford.com/little.html applied (Unless you want to get yourself an actual Scheme implementation, which would be fantastic). Also, if you work through both that, and "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs," you'll have super-high nerd cred.
That sounds like a reasonable plan. The choice of Lua or Cg depends on the type of programming you plan to do - it sounds like you might be interested in gaming. Personally, I would recommend Haskell ahead of Lisp as a vehicle for learning to be a better programmer. I think Python is close enough to Lisp that learning Lisp-proper won't buy you much.
I actually wrote a huge edit to the above post. Unfortunately, Reddit seems to have hiccuped, and it got lost. Since I took the time to write it, I'll post it below...
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Wow, after reading the responses in this forum, I really worry that you're being lead astray.
Please realize that I like Lisp. It's a wonderfully fun language, and I highly recommend that you learn it eventually. That said, there are several problems with learning it as your first language. In no particular order:
Anyway, just wanted to give a different perspective. I don't wish to discourage you from learning Lisp, but I really do not think that it is a good first language.
dude, A) you're taking this way too seriously, lighten up, and B) the fact that the book doesn't go into all that detail is a SELLING POINT. the MIT Lisp book is 657 pages. you buy that book, you're maybe creating a language two to three years from now. maybe, assuming you get through it all. you buy this, you have a language up and running lickety-split.
And all that stuff about "you can do this for $5" and "you can get this for free", look, I'm not saying there aren't options out there for people who are broke, desperate, or cheap. If that's where you're at, there are plenty of options for you. Likewise, there's nothing to say you can't get this book AND some other, bigger book that takes more time. In fact here's an affiliate link for SICP:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262011530?ie=UTF8&tag=gilebowk-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0262011530
Yay! Now I make money either way.
Anyway, dude, nothing personal, but you've written way too many comments on this thing. I get the theme: you're not going to buy the book. OK, that's cool, that's your choice, I don't care. But all this anger about somebody else selling a book that isn't the book you would write, if you got off your ass and wrote a book, dude, get over it, or write a book. If you write a book, I will be thrilled to check it out. But I don't have time to argue with you all day about whether or not this is the exact book that should have been written. If you're that passionate about what an intro text to languages should be, then write it already. Bitching on Reddit doesn't do anybody any good.
That's good research. :)
The edition I was looking at was this one, which is the only hardcover the UK amazon have in stock. Rip off britain strikes again
EDIT: Out of interest, does anyone know how much the authors get from a book this expensive? I'm guessing it's a very small slice of the pie
Read and do the exercises in this book, or go to a class that teaches this book:
[Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs](
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262011530?tag=steveysblogra-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0262011530&adid=1K8T44EK9YN586JPAZMM&)
You will learn that the language is not important but the algorithms are.