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Mark Needham
As a current comp-sci student who has worked through a large portion of SICP, (and watched the associated Abelson and Sussmann lectures), I'd say it depends on what you want to get out of it.
I'd say yes, read it! But SICP is unlikely to give any concrete skills or directly applicable methods for a standard software developer job – it uses Scheme (programming language), a dialect of Lisp, designed as a teaching language and not widely used in the mainstream software industry, and it's hardly say, an introduction to Python or Ruby on Rails (web framework). After all, the book was written in 1984! Nor is it something that will get you a job as easily as getting experience in hot new technology "X" to put on your resume.
It's also quite difficult.
However, if you take the time to understand it, it will turn your head inside out and forever change the way you think about solving problems with code.
This book teaches the some of the fundamental underpinnings of Computer Science. If you want to understand the theory behind CS, Recursion, the advantages of creating your own domain-specific language, how to solve difficult problems, or what all the fuss about Lisp and Functional Programming is about, SICP is a fantastic book.
Joel Spolsky has an article relevant to this sort of thing, referring to the change from MIT style SICP CS courses to more Java-centric, vocational type CS, here:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ar...
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As a current comp-sci student who has worked through a large portion of SICP, (and watched the associated Abelson and Sussmann lectures), I'd say it depends on what you want to get out of it.
I'd say yes, read it! But SICP is unlikely to give any concrete skills or directly applicable methods for a standard software developer job – it uses Scheme (programming language), a dialect of Lisp, designed as a teaching language and not widely used in the mainstream software industry, and it's hardly say, an introduction to Python or Ruby on Rails (web framework). After all, the book was written in 1984! Nor is it something that will get you a job as easily as getting experience in hot new technology "X" to put on your resume.
It's also quite difficult.
However, if you take the time to understand it, it will turn your head inside out and forever change the way you think about solving problems with code.
This book teaches the some of the fundamental underpinnings of Computer Science. If you want to understand the theory behind CS, Recursion, the advantages of creating your own domain-specific language, how to solve difficult problems, or what all the fuss about Lisp and Functional Programming is about, SICP is a fantastic book.
Joel Spolsky has an article relevant to this sort of thing, referring to the change from MIT style SICP CS courses to more Java-centric, vocational type CS, here:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ar...
See Questions On Quora
Continue reading...
