←back to thread

466 points pieterr | 1 comments | | HN request time: 1.321s | source
Show context
alabhyajindal ◴[] 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).
replies(10): >>42158751 #>>42158826 #>>42159255 #>>42159370 #>>42160603 #>>42160635 #>>42160830 #>>42161196 #>>42162892 #>>42165123 #
rustybolt ◴[] 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.

replies(1): >>42159553 #
1. cess11 ◴[] 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.