- Hardcover: 556 pages
- Publisher: McGraw-Hill Science/Engineering/Math; 2 edition (Aug 1 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0070004846
- ISBN-13: 978-0070004849
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15 x 3.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 1 Kg
- Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (117 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#418,843 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #15 in Books > Computers & Internet > Programming > Languages & Tools > Lisp
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
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 an alternate Hardcover edition.
Book Description
With an analytical and rigorous approach to problem solving and programming techniques, this book is oriented toward engineering. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs emphasizes the central role played by different approaches to dealing with time in computational models. Its unique approach makes it appropriate for an introduction to computer science courses, as well as programming languages and program design.
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Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Classic,
By paul graham (Cambridge, MA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, 2nd Edition (Hardcover)
This is one of the great classics of computer science. I bought my first copy 15 years ago, and I still don't feel I have learned everything the book has to teach.I have learned enough to write a couple books on Lisp that (currently) have four to five stars. Yet SICP, which is pretty much the bible of our world, has only three? How can this be? Reading the reviews made it clear what happened. An optimistic professor somewhere has been feeding SICP to undergrads who are not ready for it. But it is encouraging to see how many thoughtful people have come forward to defend the book. Let's see if we can put this in terms that the undergrads will understand -- a problem set: 1. Kenneth Clark said that if a lot of smart people have liked something that you don't, you should try and figure out what they saw in it. List 10 qualities that SICP's defenders have claimed for it. 2. How is the intention of SICP different from that of Knuth? Kernighan & Ritchie? An algorithms textbook? 3. Does any other book fulfill this purpose better? 4. What other programming books first published in the mid 1980s are still relevant today? 5. Could the concepts in this book have been presented any better in a language other than Scheme? 6. Who is al? Why is his name in lowercase?
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great book and a magnificent vocational test,
By
This review is from: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, 2nd Edition (Hardcover)
SICP is an excellent, perhaps the best, advanced introduction to computer science and programming. It covers topics such as functional abstraction, data abstraction, OOP, program design, constraint programming and logic programming, always from a language design point of view. You will need a decent mathematical background to follow it.If it's such a great textbook, then why half of the reviewers hate it? Elementary: SICP is not just a textbook, it's also a Computer Science aptitude and vocational test. If you read it and like it, then Congratulations! You are a real programmer and computer scientist, with hair on your chest. If you don't like it, then you should be studying something else. Law, mortuary science, whatever, but not CS.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The usefulness of this book is not immediately obvious.,
By
This review is from: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, 2nd Edition (Hardcover)
This book is not about learning lisp. It's even only fringely about learning how to program. What's contained in it is more than a simple description of abstraction, or modularity, or anything else you'd find in an introductory text. It even escews talking about those concepts in their simplest form to a degree. It approaches them from a 50,000 foot level, discussion how everything is an abstraction, and by layering these abstractions we can build comprehensible programs. This book has the possibility to change how you think if you listen to it.That being said, it is _not_ a book on how to build software. I've seen many good software engineers discard this book because most of the code presented has no business anywhere near a real software engineering project. Even a lot of the concepts portrayed don't belong in day to day use. But at the end of the day, this book gets the closest I've seen to explaining the hard parts of computer science and software engineering. It's a book about patterns without explicitly discussing them. It's a book about how design software without much explicit discussion of the design process. Much like some of the abstractions and "meta" concepts that it presents, it's a book that teaches you how to learn how to learn about programming...
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