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SICP: The only computer science book worth reading twice? (2010)

(simondobson.org)
460 points pieterr | 2 comments | 16 Nov 24 17:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.423s | source
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alabhyajindal ◴[16 Nov 24 19:46 UTC] No.42158703[source]▶
I really wanted to like SICP but Lisp throws me off. I love Haskell and Standard ML however! Did others have a similar experience? Might be interesting to read a book similar in spirit to SICP but using a different language as a vehicle (No, I don't want to do SICP in JavaScript).
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1. rustybolt ◴[16 Nov 24 20:03 UTC] No.42158826[source]▶
I really wanted to like SICP and I probably would have if I read it 15 years ago. I started reading it last month and I found it to be too broad. It covers too much interesting mathematical principles and then jumps to the next one right when it starts to get interesting. In other words, it's too shallow.

It probably doesn't help that I've seen many courses/documents that are (in hindsight) derivatives from SICP, so I have the nagging thought "not this again" when a topic is introduced in SICP.

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2. cess11 ◴[16 Nov 24 21:33 UTC] No.42159553[source]▶
It's written for engineers, they already know the math, but they don't know how to design and implement virtual machines, objects, compilers and whatnot that it shows how to do.