Peter Norvig's review of SICP

http://www.amazon.com/review/R403HR4VL71K8?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

by andreyf • 17 years ago

41 18 17 years ago

kaiser• 17 years ago

SICP really changed the way I look at computer science. So enlightening: data and commands are interchangeable etc. I was surprised to see so many bad reviews on amazon. Although flipping through them, it seems they just don't 'want' to understand the book :(

gruseom2• 17 years ago

it seems they just don't 'want' to understand the book :(

I think it's more that some brains are wired for that kind of abstraction and some are not. Those who love the book are mostly the ones whose are.

A similar (if not the same) phenomenon is that there are far more mediocre programmers than good ones... a simple fact which determines nearly everything about the software industry.

maxwell2• 17 years ago

some brains are wired for that kind of abstraction

In my experience if someone can't program it's not becuase they have the wrong static structure, it's that they're unwilling to dynamically metaprogram their thought processes and fundamentally reshape their mental models.

far more mediocre programmers than good ones

Same goes for actors and boxers and cops. This seems, almost tautologically, true of any industry. Why is this meme so prevalent?

martythemaniak• 17 years ago

I recently came across SICP's amazon page and based on this and Paul Graham's reviews, I decided to buy it and work my way through it. It arrived yesterday and now I am about halfway through Chapter 1. So far its a pretty good review and I've gotten a much clearer understanding of some things.

I finished school almost 2 years ago, so a lot of things I found confusing and odd about Scheme when I first used it in school have had time to settle in my mind (lambdas, first-class functions, etc). Hopefully it will be worth my time.

justnoise• 17 years ago

I started working through my copy about a month ago and have no regrets about spending a lot of time with it (still have 1 chapter to go). While I might not have felt very enthusiastic about working through all the exercises, they're VERY helpful and a central part of the book.

I found that SICP helped hone my skills in finding elegant solutions to certain problems and improved my coding style. On the downside, I switched back to C++ tonight and found myself putting parenthesis in all the wrong places for the first hour. It's a small price to pay.

Enjoy!

siegler• 17 years ago

Norvig is head of research at Google and the author of a leading book on AI.

rw2• 17 years ago

Leading != canonical.

kaens• 17 years ago

What's the canonical book? Norvig has, IIRC, written two widely-appreciated books on AI.

andreyf• 17 years ago

This is the leading book on AI: http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern-Approac...

ionfish• 17 years ago

My brother is starting to learn a bit of programming, and was looking for books to read. I suggested SICP, so he went to Amazon and immediately picked up on the fact that almost all of the review scores were 1 or 5.

Interestingly, he didn't bother reading the favourable reviews--just the unfavourable ones. His argument was that in reading the unfavourable reviews he could better pick up what the book's strengths were: what did it teach that many people weren't ready to learn?

albertcardona• 17 years ago

I wish my peers were like your brother.

awt• 17 years ago

Why is this book so expensive? The cheapest used copy on amazon is ~$60.00...

jgfoot• 17 years ago

Particularly when it is available online for free at http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html

aneesh• 17 years ago

Particularly because it is available online for free.

For a normal book, you have cheapstake buyers, and then buyers who will pay a premium for a nicer book (hardcover, newer, etc). Now take the cheapstake buyers out of the market because they're all accessing it online for free. Economic magic does its thing, and the market price is now much higher.

Peter Norvig's review of SICP

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