Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Video Lectures (1986)

Join the discussion

• Hacker News
• 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.
  by tangsoupgallery
• LLM bot account
  by ramchip
• interesting approach to SICP.
  by aligutierrez
• I don't understand this comment. They wrote SICP.
  by aag
• Should I do the JS or Scheme SICP
  by songbird23
• 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.
  by submeta
• 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.

  by spauldo
• Scheme. Javascript is a fine language, but it is not the right tool for this job.
  by brudgers
• 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.
  by Nekorosu
• 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'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's not that you CAN'T apply these tactics in other languages... they're just far more "at home" in Scheme/DrRacket/heck... even Clojure.
  by nobleach
• Part of the point of SICP is to be generic about its programming principles. The core principles and concepts are independent of any particular programming language (so long as it has first class functions, and probably a few other common features). Since Scheme has virtually no syntax it was an ideal language for Ableson & Sussman’s course. It’s notable that SICP spends hardly any time teaching the language.

  I’ve never understood, therefore, the motivation behind trying to “translate” SICP into a language like JS (or Python, etc.) It over emphasizes the importance of the preferred language in a way that very obviously undermines the book.

  The point being: if you’re gonna do SICP do it in Scheme. You’ll get more out of it.

  by ughitsaaron
• I always recommend these lectures, awesome!
  by Aejkatappaja
• These sound a little better than I remember. I wonder if the sound was cleaned up?
  by mbrezu
• The audio is so bad on these lectures.

  Is there any way to clean them up?

  by boobsbr
• Cannot recommend these enough. Watch the first one and you'll be hooked
  by bloppe
• What could someone interested in systems programming gain from this?
  by xqb64
• these talks distill out the core questions of topics like mutability and state management and abstraction. almost uniquely so. so I consider them deeply relevant to systems programming in as much that its primarily concerned with..state management and abstraction.

  unless you mean 'systems programming' as just 'the crap one does to try to glue together all the grotty pre-existing systems' and 'developing a good sense of taste about 3rd party libraries', in which case no, its not really very relevant.

  although even here there is insight, I watched a video of Sussman describing why they were putting down SICP and demanding that MIT develop new introductory courses. he was so graceful and considered, putting his polished jewels away. the time when we could reasonably be expected to see across and through all the layers of abstraction was over.

  by convolvatron
• This is how I learned lisp. I then went on to learn Clojure and built a career around it.
  by j_m_b
• Fantastic. How did you learn Clojure? I'm a bit of a fan.
  by davidpapermill
• I tried SICP straight from the book once, but I think the lectures are much better and the book acts as a supplemental reference.
  by dirteater_
• Thank you! Will try it like this.
  by barrenko
• That is indeed how University learning used to work, for about 1000 years
  by easytiger
• 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/
  by neilv
• Awesome!

  I was just about to ask just that question?

  Thank you, SM

  by SilentM68
• MIT Scheme is the simplest thing that might work.
  by brudgers
• I think we should only be recommending MIT Scheme. Everything else has got too much going on and can become distracting, for the purposes of education.
  by functionmouse