On Dec 28, 2007 3:24 PM, David Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, Dec 28, 2007 at 02:23:04PM -0800, Mark Schoonover wrote: > > >I never heard of these two books. I've looked at them quickly, and from > what > >I can tell, they teach you Scheme in order to understand various computer > >science topics. The way I understand SICP is that they teach various > >computer science topics, then demonstrate that with Lisp. By going > through > >SICP, you won't be a Lisp programmer necessarily. For myself, I'm more > >interested in the theory, and I really don't care what the language is > used > >to demonstrate. Plus the history of the course, the available resources > etc > >has me leaning more towards jumping straight in to SICP. > > Good summary. SICP is a book about fairly hardcore computer science > topics, that happens to use Scheme as the language. If your goal is to > learn scheme, there are other books that do that better. SICP uses scheme > because it is easier to get the language out of the way and focus on the > concepts. Actually, the language is simple enough that in the course of > the book, you end up implementing the advanced concepts instead of just > using them in a larger language or library. > > Dave > > > And this is an undergrad course at MIT. Makes me wonder what a graduate or PhD level courses are like.
For those of you just interested in learning Lisp, this may not be the way to go. Practical Common Lisp is freely available to learn Lisp. http://gigamonkeys.com/book/ -- Mark Schoonover http://ka6wke.blogspot.com http://marksitblog.blogspot.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] Give me ambiguity, or give me something else! --kelsey hudson -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
