What's your favorite SICP passage?

I like 2.3.4, where it discusses Huffman encoding trees.
In general, we can attain significant savings if we use variable-length prefix codes that take advantage of the relative frequencies of the symbols in the messages to be encoded. One particular scheme for doing this is called the Huffman encoding method, after its discoverer, David Huffman. A Huffman code can be represented as a binary tree whose leaves are the symbols that are encoded. At each non-leaf node of the tree there is a set containing all the symbols in the leaves that lie below the node. In addition, each symbol at a leaf is assigned a weight (which is its relative frequency), and each non-leaf node contains a weight that is the sum of all the weights of the leaves lying below it. The weights are not used in the encoding or the decoding process. We will see below how they are used to help construct the tree.
It was hard to understand at first, but well worth it.

I like the part where Sussman and Abelson are arguing over iterative structures or recursive functions are better, and the Sussman wipes the floor with the Ableson with a formal proof that they are equivalently, therefore, since recursive functions are more intuitive, they are better.

I gained a lot of respect the the Sussman that day.

>>2
Your post made my eyes melt

>>2
iterations are more intuitive

3.5.3  Exploiting the Stream Paradigm

Euler's turbocompressor:
Even better, we can accelerate the accelerated sequence, and recursively accelerate that, and so on. Namely, we create a stream of streams (a structure we'll call a tableau) in which each stream is the transform of the preceding one: [...]

I remember that I came so hard that I shat my pants

[...] we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells.

>>4
No they aren't. Well, maybe they are for idiots.

>>4
From a mathematical perspective, recursion is more intuitive. From a factory worker `push button, move something, push button, move thing, push button...' perspective, iteration is certainly more intuitive.

I wish I could program like Sussman

>>9
Sure, he's good, but is he Abelson good?

There's this thing called function call overhead. Recursion will make your programs run slow like Ruby even if it's C.

>>11
Yes, but iteration makes your programs run stupid like Python even if it's Lisp.

>>12
Explain?