13 comments

  • neilv10 hours ago
    If you want to work through SICP, you can use MIT Scheme, but another option is to use Racket or DrRacket, with this add-on package: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.racket-lang.org&#x2F;sicp-manual&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.racket-lang.org&#x2F;sicp-manual&#x2F;</a>
    • brudgers6 hours ago
      MIT Scheme is the simplest thing that might work.
    • SilentM687 hours ago
      Awesome!<p>I was just about to ask just that question?<p>Thank you, SM
  • dirteater_8 hours ago
    I tried SICP straight from the book once, but I think the lectures are much better and the book acts as a supplemental reference.
    • easytiger6 hours ago
      That is indeed how University learning used to work, for about 1000 years
      • epolanski4 hours ago
        It&#x27;s *supposed* to work.<p>In reality you get lectures from individuals that became professors because they are great at politics&#x2F;research but not at teaching (very different skill).<p>If you even get them and not their 25 year old assistants.<p>And this is apparently super common even in ivy league universities as Youtube lessons have shown me over and over.
        • nobleach57 minutes ago
          This is why it&#x27;s so awesome watching David Malan teach Harvard CS50 (free YouTube videos). His presence, knowledge and overall enthusiasm for the topic are outstanding. If more of my college courses had that level, I&#x27;d have been far more engaged. When I look back, I realize that I paid a TON of money to have some professors basically &quot;phone it in&quot;, yet expect me to basically teach myself their subject of expertise. &quot;Build a compiler&quot;. Yes, I can (and did) learn that from a book. I imagine if I had someone truly engaging the room during those sessions, I&#x27;d have come away with FAR more appreciation. That could have even led to a different career path.
        • aag2 hours ago
          Sussman and Abelson are great at teaching.
          • epolanski1 hour ago
            I&#x27;m sure they are, just against the generalization that in class is always strictly necessary as not everyone is Sussman.
    • barrenko7 hours ago
      Thank you! Will try it like this.
  • j_m_b1 hour ago
    This is how I learned lisp. I then went on to learn Clojure and built a career around it.
  • xqb641 hour ago
    What could someone interested in systems programming gain from this?
  • boobsbr2 hours ago
    The audio is so bad on these lectures.<p>Is there any way to clean them up?
  • bloppe8 hours ago
    Cannot recommend these enough. Watch the first one and you&#x27;ll be hooked
  • Aejkatappaja4 hours ago
    I always recommend these lectures, awesome!
  • mbrezu7 hours ago
    These sound a little better than I remember. I wonder if the sound was cleaned up?
  • songbird237 hours ago
    Should I do the JS or Scheme SICP
    • nobleach53 minutes ago
      The JS version of the book (I still bought it when it came out) is just weird. It has you writing JS in a non-idiomatic way that you&#x27;d never see (nor should you be the person introducing) in the industry. SICP teaches a very LISP-y way of thinking through problems. It&#x27;s not that you CAN&#x27;T apply these tactics in other languages... they&#x27;re just far more &quot;at home&quot; in Scheme&#x2F;DrRacket&#x2F;heck... even Clojure.
    • spauldo2 hours ago
      I&#x27;ll add another recommendation for Scheme. The concepts in SICP map very well into Scheme, whereas I can only imagine them being awkward and non-idiomatic in JS. There&#x27;s lots of passing around first class functions and use of recursion.<p>One of the two professors (Dr. Sussman) that give the lectures in this series is a co-creator of Scheme.
    • Nekorosu5 hours ago
      I have both books. Scheme for sure! Env setup can be a bit of an issue but it is doable. Regarding it, I remember having some weird issues with MIT Scheme on a modern computer, but Racket&#x2F;DrRacket works well.
    • brudgers6 hours ago
      Scheme. Javascript is a fine language, but it is not the right tool for this job.
    • submeta7 hours ago
      I‘d go with Scheme. You‘ll learn the basics in a day. The language spec is only a few pages. And Scheme reads like pseudo-code with parentheses.
  • aligutierrez8 hours ago
    interesting approach to SICP.
    • aag2 hours ago
      I don&#x27;t understand this comment. They wrote SICP.
  • tangsoupgallery10 hours ago
    These 1986 lectures are the definitive SICP experience — the Hal and Gerry show at its peak. The presentation quality holds up remarkably well, and seeing the metacircular evaluator built live is something no textbook can fully capture. For those who find the book dense, these lectures provide the pacing and intuition that make the abstractions click.