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460 points pieterr | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.218s | source
1. jll29 ◴[] No.42163230[source]
SICP is the best book to read as one's first book when studying computer science.

After many years of hobbyist programming (and consuming 'structured programming' books as well as languages from Pascal to Common LISP) we used Abelson & Sussmann at my undergraduate comp. sci. course, and it was eye-opening.

It demonstrates the simplicity, beauty and interactivity of Scheme while teaching you that computer science is the layering of different kinds of abstractions (from procedural abstraction and data abstraction, over defining your own (domain specific) language and implementing a compiler for it to defining new hardware in software). All of it seems so effortless, how only true masters can make things look like.

Make sure you buy the second edition, not the first or more recent ones, however (which use Python instead of Scheme - ugh).