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SICP?

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 6:17

Is SICP actually good or is this another one of your silly memes?

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 6:21

Its not relevant to the industry, its badly written, and its considered harmful and detrimental to developing the skills of new programmers.  It should only be recommended for its historical value, so pretty much only if you plan to have career in academia.  Instead please recommend a book such as 'The C programming language' to newbies or ex web-designers looking to get a good foundation on the fundamentals.

I don't want to see SICP mentioned around here anymore or you will be reprimanded, please follow the lead of computer science institutions around the world and don't teach SICP anymore.  Thanks, and welcome to 2009.

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 6:24

Of course it's good. It's pretty much one of the required readings if you want solid programming/compsci foundations.

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 6:25

>>1
both !

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 6:32

>>2
Its not relevant to the industry,
nobody gives a crap about your industry shit.
>>2
its badly written, and its considered harmful and detrimental to developing the skills of new programmers.
this is fucking retarded
>Instead please recommend a book such as 'The C programming language' to newbies or ex web-designers looking to get a good foundation on the fundamentals.
Hurr Durr lisp is bad C is good durr
if you are a good programer language does not matter anymore.

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 6:32

it's great if you aspire to being an unemployable Lisper

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 6:59

>>5
I do think SICP is a very important introductory compsci book, but >>2 might be slightly right on the 'detrimental' parts, as I believe a programmer should first get used to the dirty parts: learn some digital logic, then assembler, then some C, and after that possibly learn some random popular high level OOP language, and after that he can finally read SICP, learn Scheme and then learn Lisp, and be enlightened and enjoy writing beautiful software. If a programmer is already shown what the peak of his experience may be, he may find it unbearable to work with lesser languages, and if his foundations aren't good enough, he might not understand certain concepts that SICP presents in the first try (he can read SICP again, or study something else and come back). Some people may also consider that some students may develop a habit of writing tail-recursive functions instead of loops for everything to be a bad habbit, when working in languages which actually have powerful looping constructs, but I believe that's just a matter of style and preference, and it's up to the programmer to pick which suits the problem best(the tail-recursive version should only be considered if the language he is coding in has TCO). In general, I believe SICP does a lot more good than whatever few bad habits one might pick from it.

Of course, just advocating that one reads 'The C programming language' and avoids SICP altogether is a bad idea, as it only teaches one way to program (in C), as it will make the programmer ignorant of some very interesting and usable ideas and tools that he can make use of.

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 7:15

ITT we talk to copypasta.

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 7:18

If a programmer is already shown what the peak of his experience may be, he may find it unbearable to work with lesser languages
IHBT. 10/10

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 7:20

>>7
Fuck assembler, teach them forth

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 7:21

SICP is completely useless in real life. You should read  ``Teach yourself J2EE in two weeks'' and ``Design Patterns'' instead.

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 7:22

Functional programmers are the Apple inc. fanatics of the programming world.

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 7:28

>>11
OP isn't asking about the industry, and you're confusing 'real life' with 'the industry'. People can write in what language they want for their own projects or at startups, which can brings them financial gain. While there's a few companies that actually do hire Lispers to write Lisp code, they're few, most companies like Java, SEPPLES, C#.

Learning Java/C# is simple, and learning workarounds to a broken single-dispatch OO system (some of which are named ``Design Patterns'') isn't hard either. Don't think this is some huge achievement, because it's nothing at all. Anyone can do it.

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 7:30

and you're confusing 'real life' with 'the industry'

You're idea of real life is to live under a bridge with a netbook and a Scheme interpreter.

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 7:31

>>12
Ahem.
Learning Lisp or Scheme is no more impressive than learning Java or C#.
You've got rocks in your head if you think they're any more difficult than other languages and that it's some kind of achievement to learn them.

Name: >>13 2009-11-27 7:47

>>14
I don't code much in Scheme, and I do know C# and Java, however there are jobs out there where you can write some Lisp or Scheme for profit, most of them are unique new projects with plenty of potential and they are mostly disconnected from the mainstream software industry/ENTERPRISE. The most down-to-earth Lisp jobs that I've seen were some cool web programming/design company which was using it due to the extremly fast development cycle (try one of those nice continuations-based web frameworks, development in them is quite a breeze).

Most of the code that I'm writing now is Lisp with a bit of C and assembler and is for a certain niche subdomain which is mostly without competition. Feels good man!

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 8:03

>>1
It's coloured purple. How could anything be better than that? Also, we don't have any meme here. We have catch phrases.

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 8:04

Lets have a sober look:
1.It meant for college freshmen.
2.It teaches computer science. Not programming.
3.It is fairly old and fixates on functional paradigms of LISP.
4.It does not provide anything non-standard, unusual or "satori-like" about problem solving.
All the approaches listed have been used by academia for decades.

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 8:06

>>18
this

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 8:06

>>12
Ruby on Rails ``programmers'' are the Apple inc. fanatics of the programming world.

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 8:10

>>18
>It teaches computer science. Not programming.
Fine. Now please recommend me a book that teaches programming.

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 8:11

does it work now?

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 8:14

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 8:16

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 8:24

EXPERT C PROGRAMMING

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 8:26

>>23-24
Thank you!

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 8:28

>>14
well this is how i live.

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 9:02

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 9:08

>>28
The question is, why none of the books listed there is about LISP.

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 9:17

>>28-29
SICP is thought using Scheme, but it's a general computer science and programming book, it's not a book about Scheme or Lisp, but about more general topics which apply to the entire field. It seems to be listed here at least: http://www.programmingbooks.org/Books_Every_Programmer_Should_Read

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 9:49

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 9:56

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 9:57

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 9:58

>>32
Matt Dickie???

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 10:17

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 10:17

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 10:18

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 10:18

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 10:19

Name: Anonymous 2009-11-27 10:19


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