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 | | Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - 2nd Edition (MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) by Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman ISBN-10: 0262011530 ISBN-10: 0-262-01153-0 ISBN-13: 9780262011532 ISBN-13: 978-0-262-01153-2 Hardcover 1996-07-25 The MIT Press Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Amazon.com Abelson and Sussman's classic Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs teaches readers how to program by employing the tools of abstraction and modularity. The authors' central philosophy is that programming is the task of breaking large problems into small ones. The book spends a great deal of time considering both this decomposition and the process of knitting the smaller pieces back together. The authors employ this philosophy in their writing technique. The text asks the broad question "What is programming?" Having come to the conclusion that programming consists of procedures and data, the authors set off to explore the related questions of "What is data?" and "What is a procedure?" The authors build up the simple notion of a procedure to dizzying complexity. The discussion culminates in the description of the code behind the programming language Scheme. The authors finish with examples of how to implement some of the book's concepts on a register machine. Through this journey, the reader not only learns how to program, but also how to think about programming. | ||
Product Description Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has had a dramatic impact on computer science curricula over the past decade. This long-awaited revision contains changes throughout the text. There are new implementations of most of the major programming systems in the book, including the interpreters and compilers, and the authors have incorporated many small changes that reflect their experience teaching the course at MIT since the first edition was published. A new theme has been introduced that emphasizes the central role played by different approaches to dealing with time in computational models: objects with state, concurrent programming, functional programming and lazy evaluation, and nondeterministic programming. There are new example sections on higher-order procedures in graphics and on applications of stream processing in numerical programming, and many new exercises. In addition, all the programs have been reworked to run in any Scheme implementation that adheres to the IEEE standard. | ||
Reviews | ||
The one book *every* programmer must read Abelson and Sussman have created a masterpiece, a book initially written in the 1980s, and that still hasn't lost one bit of relevance. Everything it contains must, must be learned and understood by any aspiring programmer. It teaches algorithms and data structures, good programming style, provides some contact with large systems, experimenting with their implementation and modification. You will learn about functional programming, imperative programming, object-oriented programming in it. You will learn how to implement interpreters, compilers, arithmetic systems, simulators, a whole virtual machine in it, and much more. The exercises of SICP are essential to understanding. Looking back at the work I've done on the book, I don't think I would have understood it near so well without doing a lot of the exercises. There's only so much material that can be gained from reading. Getting your hands dirty with code is essential to true understanding. And the authors of SICP brought this concept to perfection, with their excellent exercises, that are an unreplaceable companion to the book. Although they're not 100% perfect, for the most part the exercises are very well thought out and tuned to aid understanding and practice writing parts of large systems. | ||
Single most important CS book If you disagree, hopefully you're thinking Knuth. But consider this: Knuth is a wonderful bestiary of important programs and proofs; SICP is about the very nature of programming and programs. If you're not thinking either, and no offense to K&R et al: Do yourself a favor, watch the videos. Sussman & Abelson are entertaining teachers. SICP is a difficult book, and seeing Sussman in a fez after the metacircular evaluator just... helps. But of course Graham's and Norvig's reviews are gems of their own. | ||
this book saved my life So there I was, 18 years old, having been raised on a toxic stew of MS-BASIC, Apple II assembly and some MPW Pascal. My mind was poisoned. Everything I knew about programming was wrong. I read book after book on programming and CS, but none of them really seemed to make a real dent in my style. Enter SICP. In a few months, this book reshaped my concept of what it meant to program a computer. It does not spend time teaching a language; Scheme is presented precisely because its syntax and commands can be covered in about ten minutes, and its structure becomes absolutely transparent within a few days of looking at Scheme code. It does not spend time walking the reader through common coding tasks, as a Learn X In 24 Hours text might. SICP teaches the fundamentals of programming mastery. Abstraction, modularity, design paradigms, compilation and interpretation, and more topics are presented in a style which is exactly as simple as it can be, and no simpler. Scheme allows these topics to be covered without becoming mired in details which would otherwise plague the implementor. It will not show you how to write a GUI, scrape a web page, develop a social networking website or create a network server. It will, however, guide a dedicated reader through an exploration of immensely powerful programming technique, and it will prepare the reader to solve any problem in any language for the future. SICP is not a machine gun, putting power into casual hands. It is a light saber, rewarding discipline and practice with unstoppable capability. | ||
Mind-changing This is the best book on programming I have ever met in my life and, most probably, will ever meet. It not only surprised me and made me think "Oh my god, how come I didn't think this way/about these so incredibly important things before?" dozens of times in every single chapter during every of my 3(in a row) readings of it but it actually changed the way I think about programs and the way I write them. The authors have a perfect sense of balance between complexity and importance: they never skip important things silently and they never dig too deep into dull subtleties, instead they point out the really meaningful points and either invent a solution before the reader's eyes or give clues that inspire the reader to work out the solution himself. The book does not teach most of the basic algorithms and data structures, like quicksort of graph path finding (except for several examples that fit well for the purpose of a particular chapter), it is not a programming reference: it is a manual on methods of computation: exactly what the title says. So, in case you have a pragmatic problem you can't just take the book and find a solution: I guess this is the reason for low ratings. But if you read the book thoroughly, you will definitely become an order of magnitude better programmer and that is much more important than knowing concrete algorithms. I also extremely highly recommend the same-named video course by the same authors at http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/ : I first was intrigued and shocked with it and only afterwards saw and immediately bought the book. It is a pity I have not yet had time to watch all the lectures (I watched about a half). | ||
from a student who use the book for a course I'm an undergrad who is currently taking an introductory class in C.S using the book as the primary textbook (actually, the only textbook). Sadly, I'm taking it with another class in computer architecture with heavy emphasis on system programming (a la C, MIPS). Like one of the reviewers having pointed out, the excessive zeal of pedantic and theoretical C.S has left the students clueless about the connection between reality and fundamental ideas presented in the book. The authors enforces a grand vision of solving problems independent of programming language. Sadly, this is not the case in practice (I have been trying to port some algorithms in the book into C, oh boy, what a frustrating experience). This vision has left me a very bad impression on Scheme (a good-for-nothing language invented by geeks to impress other geeks). Some people have said they liked the book. At the beginning of semester. I liked the book too, since programming in functional style is completely new to me (who major in C.S wouldn't delight at learning new thing). HOWEVER, the more I delved into the book while taking a computer architecture course at the same time (in which I have to design a complete 8-bit CPU from ground up, as well as doing a lot of low-level programming), the more I feel there are some fundamental issues with using Scheme (or any other functional languages for that matter) as a tool to interpret and design machines and programs. It just struck me as very odd to design a computer "recursively". How ironic that the book is called "STRUCTURE and INTERPRETATION of computer programs". I agree with some reviewers in here who bashed C in favor of Scheme. C is not a very good language, but C deserves praises. There are reasons why it has been around forever (both in academic and in industry), and at this rate, I don't see how any functional languages would emerge out of academics as replacement for C. The authors in book braggs that only Fortran has been surviving longer than Scheme, but besides surviving in the this textbook (which has been pushed down my throat by my school), I haven't seen Scheme anywhere else. This textbook reminds me of the Feynman series in Physics. A series which everyone talks about, but when it comes to reality, it's just best used as a supplementary to look up for reference and self-congratulate as being "smart" rather than the one used to teach and learn from. | ||