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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: 0.208s | source
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globular-toast ◴[16 Nov 24 22:58 UTC] No.42160220[source]▶
My favourite part of SICP and something that has stuck with me for years is the idea of "wishful programming". That is where you build something top-down by simply wishing you had the lower-level routines. Then, of course, you actually go and build those lower-level routines until you reach the bottom. I find this way of thinking works really well with test-driven development. Write a test against functionality you wish you had, then go and fulfill that wish. Most developers seem to build stuff bottom-up and then end up with something that isn't really what anyone wished for.
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1. WillAdams ◴[17 Nov 24 05:41 UTC] No.42162235[source]▶
Interestingly, Dr. Donald Knuth used pretty much that approach when writing TeX --- he started by writing out the sort of formatting/tagging which seemed appropriate, then theorizing about the sort of programming which would be appropriate for markup (hence macros), then worked on the implementation.

I've been trying a similar thing for my own effort to create a library for modeling G-code in OpenSCAD --- hopefully with the recent re-write in "pure" OpenPythonSCAD it will become something usable.