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

(simondobson.org)
460 points pieterr | 1 comments | 16 Nov 24 17:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.227s | 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. hluska ◴[16 Nov 24 20:56 UTC] No.42159255[source]▶
I can identify with that - Lisp throws me off (because I’m not smart enough). But I ended up forcing myself to work through it and learned a tremendous amount because I’m not smart enough to work with a lisp. It felt like I spent so much time just reading through the code that I ended up learning more than I would in a language I’m comfortable with.

There is a Python version of SICP. I have never worked through it or even given it more than a cursory scan so this is not an endorsement more just a link to prove it exists:

https://wizardforcel.gitbooks.io/sicp-in-python/content/0.ht...