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Editorial Reviews
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. --This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title Book Description
With an analytical and rigorous approach to problem solving and programming techniques, this book is oriented towards engineering. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs emphasizes the central role played by different approaches to dealing with time in computational models. read more About the Author
Harold Abelson is Class of 1992 Professor and MacVicar Teaching Fellow, and Gerald Jay Sussman is Matsushita Professor of Electrical Engineering, both in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They have each received major computer science education awards: Abelson the IEEE Computer Society Booth Award and Sussman the ACM Karlstrom Award. Julie Sussman is a writer and editor, in both natural and computer languages. --This text... read more
Customer Reviews
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junk
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Reviewer:
Ted Shane
from USA
January 13, 2000
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There's no useful material here, whatever your level of sophistication. Beginners will find that Scheme, and the book's approach in general are confusing. Those who are advanced will find the text is full of bull, and a book like "Introduction to Algorithms" by Cormen et.al. will provide you with many more theoretical and practical topics alike, but it's advanced (and hence more interesting than SICP drivel). If you are a beginner, "C++ how to program" by Deitel will teach you all about object oriented and top down programming, plus you'll learn the C++, the most common language out there. Whatever is presented, is of such poor quality, and so dry, I couldn't stay awake long enough to finish my assignments. You can learn how to be a good programmer from any computer science course or text, and there are only several sections about that in this book. If you are looking for interesting theoretical ideas, look for other texts, such as the ones mentioned above. From what I've read, I get the impression this book was written in a rush, and with the purpose of cramming tons of nonsense and filler in just to have an excuse to present Scheme (a pathetic language). The authors claim to present a view of programming that's widely applicable, and state that top-down (i.e. procedural) programming is by far not the best way to think about programs abstractly. Well, they don't stick to their promise. They present a biased, one sided promotion of scheme as the best language out there. No attempt is made to make comparisons between functional languages like scheme and normal languages like C. The end result, you come out knowing scheme and a few boring applications of it, but can't apply any of it to real programming tasks. This proves this book is just a fancy concotion of some egghead professor who has no idea what happens in the real world. I found many explanations to be incoherent and contradictory. The whole approach is divorced from the computing practice. This is no 21 day book, in fact, you can spend 21 months on it and still not learn a thing, because there's nothing but worthless garbage here.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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2 of 2 people found this review helpful.
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An amazing piece of work
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Reviewer:
A reader
from Seattle, WA
January 6, 2000
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While there certainly are better books for every topic covered in SICP, no other book does such a good job covering such a wide range of CS topics. It's not for the faint of heart and initial chapters will probably scare the mathematically inclined. I find it interesting that many of the poor reviews are from the Chicago area. I can only presume one of the local universities included this book in their 2nd semester weedout course. In any case, I have a request for the future negative reviewer. I was hoping you would suggest a better choice for prospective purchasers looking for a book surveying important concepts in CS.
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1 of 2 people found this review helpful.
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An Exceptional Book
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Reviewer:
Andrew Gumperz
from Oakland, California
January 3, 2000
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SICP is a great book. If you are a patient reader and willing to work the exercises, then this is the single best book you could read about programming in general and about the Scheme dialect of Lisp in particular. I found it well-written, thorough and clear. Read this book with an open mind. It is not "Teach Yourself Programming in 21 Days". Many people don't appreciate programming theory; they would rather get on with it and start programming. If you are one of these, then you may find yourself irritated by the theory SICP includes. However, if you want to excel as a programmer it is worth taking the time to learn the theory. Some ideas may penetrate slowly but when they do, the rewards will make up for the effort. This book can be used as an introductory computer programming text, but I suspect that students won't get full benefit until they have a couple of years of programming experience under their belt. This book will make you a MUCH better programmer--something that the many books that teach a programming language but ignore computing principles can not do.
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1 of 2 people found this review helpful.
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What is your purpose for reading this book?
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Reviewer:
david park
from Oakland, California
December 11, 1999
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If your school uses this book as a text of a certain introductory cs course that you have to get a "good" grade for, you definitely want to have some help to understand it in such a short time. That is, at most, a 16 week semester. On the other hand, if you really want to explore the world of programming on your time and on your own pace, it is the ultimate source of programming magic. Some people from MIT and UC Berkeley say these wonderful things about this book, yet they are only true when you are really after the knowledge not the grade.
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3 of 4 people found this review helpful.
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