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: https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/
In reality you get lectures from individuals that became professors because they are great at politics/research but not at teaching (very different skill).
If you even get them and not their 25 year old assistants.
And this is apparently super common even in ivy league universities as Youtube lessons have shown me over and over.
I'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's lots of passing around first class functions and use of recursion.
One of the two professors (Dr. Sussman) that give the lectures in this series is a co-creator of Scheme.
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/DrRacket works well.
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.
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: https://docs.racket-lang.org/sicp-manual/
MIT Scheme is the simplest thing that might work.
Awesome!
I was just about to ask just that question?
Thank you, SM
I tried SICP straight from the book once, but I think the lectures are much better and the book acts as a supplemental reference.
That is indeed how University learning used to work, for about 1000 years
It's *supposed* to work.
In reality you get lectures from individuals that became professors because they are great at politics/research but not at teaching (very different skill).
If you even get them and not their 25 year old assistants.
And this is apparently super common even in ivy league universities as Youtube lessons have shown me over and over.
Sussman and Abelson are great at teaching.
I'm sure they are, just against the generalization that in class is always strictly necessary as not everyone is Sussman.
Thank you! Will try it like this.
The audio is so bad on these lectures.
Is there any way to clean them up?
Cannot recommend these enough. Watch the first one and you'll be hooked
I always recommend these lectures, awesome!
These sound a little better than I remember. I wonder if the sound was cleaned up?
Should I do the JS or Scheme SICP
I'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's lots of passing around first class functions and use of recursion.
One of the two professors (Dr. Sussman) that give the lectures in this series is a co-creator of Scheme.
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/DrRacket works well.
Scheme. Javascript is a fine language, but it is not the right tool for this job.
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.
interesting approach to SICP.
I don't understand this comment. They wrote SICP.
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.
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