Show HN: Interactive SICP

http://xuanji.appspot.com/isicp/1-1-elements.html

by zodiac • 14 years ago

280 51 14 years ago

xuanji.appspot.com

Tyr42• 14 years ago

uhh, It's got some sort of green bar, but it's stuck waaay over to my right and I can't read it. Chrome OSX

zodiac10• 14 years ago

try clicking on the left edge of the green bar

sorry if it's not intuitive - I wanted the content to not be too wide (for reading) and had an idea to place some non-critical things on the remaining space, but then I decided it shouldn't always be visible

edit: I've fixed the page to make the green tab visible by default

ezyang• 14 years ago

The best way to cue that it is clickable is to have it "bounce" when you mouse over it, indicating that it is hidden on purpose and can be expanded.

DigitalJack• 14 years ago

same with safari, osx

grannyg00se• 14 years ago

Same. Firefox Win7

I usually don't interrupt my reading so often with interaction. I like to read a section at a time and then do the exercises. But with this format, I could see dabbling in a little interactive work more often - which is probably a good thing.

zodiac10• 14 years ago

Hello everyone, OP here. This is my first Show HN post.

I guess most of you should know what SICP is. I took a class where it was used as a textbook (only the first 3 chapters, unfortunately) and loved it.

Most of the syntax-highlighted code fragments can be clicked on and edited. Either click somewhere else after that or press ctrl-enter to re-evaluate the scheme code. There are also some auto-graded exercises which involve writing code, as well as some multiple-choice questions (inspired by coursera)

So far only the first section is up. I don't think I can finish converting the whole of SICP to this format, so any help is much appreciated! I've tried to make the API as short as I can, but still able to run arbitrary code (eg for auto-graders). The main code is in isicp/coding.js and the content is stored in chapter-specific html files. All this is done via client-side javascript. I used biwascheme for the scheme interpreter and codemirror for the editor.

shelf• 14 years ago

A great initiative. I hope you manage to finish it.

I hope people extend the same treatment to non-lisp canonical texts.

zodiac10• 14 years ago

One reason it was possible to choose SICP was the license (Creative Commons), which I think is pretty rare for a text of this quality. If I could I'd do the same for K&R.

dbaupp• 14 years ago

I think there's a typo in example 1.5: "In normal-order evaluation, (p) is not evaluated because predicate of if evaluates to false". The 'false' should be 'true'.

jrajav• 14 years ago

Open to suggestions? Since we're using Scheme, it would be nice to have the hierarchy of parentheses rainbow-highlighted when you hover an expression with the mouse, much like what is done at http://wiki.call-cc.org/chicken-for-php-programmers

rquintas• 14 years ago

Great job, over the past week i have been doing an interactive implementation of SICP picture language, and have a working prototype to play around, check it out here: http://rquintas.net/picture-language/

keithwinstein• 14 years ago

Very nice! I sent this to Abelson and Sussman and they both loved it. I know the idea of an "intelligent book" has long been a dream of theirs.

If you find yourself in Boston, you can certainly visit CSAIL and chat with them if you want.

Surio• 14 years ago

"Green Bar" on the right: It is the navigation menu that comes into focus once you click on it. You can focus on the content w/o getting distracted by the ToC. :)

To OP. Don't worry. It is intuitive enough (for me at least (-; )

dschiptsov2• 14 years ago

SICP is an advanced text, and using it to teach amateurs how to program is, probably, a mistake.

Brian Harvey have done a great job to simplify and make it more freshman-friendly. I think his CS61A is the best intro course available (but I don't think that the sentence ADT is a such great idea, and it make things little messier, not more clear).

The HtDP2 approach is also remarkable, but problem is it is part of Racket promotion (word dr.racket is used hundred times in the first chapter). The idea to make changes in a program visible, via using graphical primitive functions is brilliant, but controversial one - it is too soon (but it kicks and makes a progress visible)

I think that functions with multiple arguments, first-class "citizens" (values has a type, everything is a pointer), pairs, lists, then generic functions and environments must be taught first, and visualized interactively, similar to that python tool. Then, after, you can teach parts from HtDP and then SICP.

People who really enjoyed this initiation will go through whole books themselves.)

dmazin3• 14 years ago

I'm currently doing SICP with Harvey and to be honest after list and cons in general are introduced I wish the course would abandon sentences altogether.

samrat3• 14 years ago

I agree. I'm doing the same course and because I couldn't get their implementation of Scheme(ucb-scheme) to work, I'm really out-of-sync with the course.

I'm doing the examples and exercises in Racket.

muyuu• 14 years ago

Agreed. It's still just a mild annoyance overall, but one that hits early on.

zodiac10• 14 years ago

I've done some of the picture exercises from Concrete Abstractions. They were quite fun but significantly harder than assignments which didn't tax my spatial perception skills.

I just checked, MIT holds the copyright for HtDP, so an interactive version like this isn't possible.

jimhefferon• 14 years ago

> MIT holds the copyright for HtDP, so an interactive version like this isn't possible.

A person could ask. Sometimes these things are done reflexively and a simple query will get a pleasant response.

uberc• 14 years ago

I can't say how "amateurs" maps to MIT freshmen, but I wanted to point out that back in the day SICP was used, in its entirety, in 6.001, the one-semester entry-level computer science course at MIT.

dschiptsov2• 14 years ago

That is true. People who were able to find their way to MIT is by no means "amateurs".

The rest of us, however, might find it overwhelming, due to lack of appropriate habits and training.

jfb• 14 years ago

SICP was the text for first-year intro computer science at Chicago when I was there. I don't think it's too much to ask of motivated amateurs.

firesofmay2• 14 years ago

Good initiative. I wish it was done in clojure/clojurescript, would have been great. But still its a nice way to learn. One suggestion. Add paredit mode to balance the parens. Without paredit mode one has to worry about balancing the parens and its a painful experience. It's like coding in notepad. Looks great! Looking forward to more chapters :)

dizzystar• 14 years ago

I can't imagine a Clojure SICP really working. The whole idea of SICP is to take a super-simple language and learn to build your own data-structure, psuedo-languages, and clarify how expressions, structures, etc. we use everyday are used, created, and implemented.

I really wish people wouldn't look at Clojure and think that it is the same as Scheme, especially the flavor presented in SICP, because it isn't. They're two entirely different languages and conflating the two as the same because OMG Parenthesis is like saying Python and Ruby are the same because they are categorized as scripting languages.

Clojure and Scheme attempt to solve very different issues. Scheme does a wonderful job in the sphere allocated in SICP. SICP could theoretically be taught with Clojure, but one must wonder why it hasn't been fully attempted yet. I think that once you try out Clojure, you would see the glove doesn't fit very well, so to speak. The main issue is that SICP is extremely fast and ideally, you'd want a language that takes a day to sort of learn and understand. Clojure certainly does not have this advantage. Clojure has many built-in structures. If you did do SICP in Clojure, you'd effectively be using a Scheme without cons, car, and cdr and using a Clojure without map, filter, etc etc etc. What's the point of that?

firesofmay2• 14 years ago

I was actually thinking of the whole web app being written in clojure/clojurescript actually. And not teaching SICP via clojure.

zodiac10• 14 years ago

Yeah, I do agree that the simplicity of scheme helps. It really is a good teaching language. That said, courses are starting to adapt SICP to different languages (MIT and UCB use python, while my own university, NUS, uses javascript: http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~cs1101s/ - there's an interactive SICP in javascript there, too)

I think a clojure interactive textbook of this sort would have to be targeted at the kind of programmer wishing to learn clojure - ie it would assume some prerequisites and discuss features specific to clojure. It seems to me to be a shame to strip clojure down to a very small scheme-like language and then teach that.

sudhirj• 14 years ago

The site doesn't seem to need a server to function - so it would be awesome if you could add a cache manifest to make it available offline:

http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/appcache/beginner/

zodiac10• 14 years ago

Sorry for repeating myself, but I really need contributors for this - I can't finish it just working on my own on weekends.

franciscoap• 14 years ago

Hey,

I thought about doing this 3 or 4 days ago (eerily similar -- I had even decided on Biwa Scheme as well). To avoid duplication of effort, I would rather contribute to your iSICP than start my own.

Drop me a line at me@f.rancis.co

ghubbard• 14 years ago

SICP - Structure And Interpretation Of Computer Programs

Is an MIT computer science textbook.

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/structure-and-interpretation-c...

BlackJack3• 14 years ago

Looks awesome. I think exercise 1.2 is broken. I enter in:

(/ (+ 5 (+ 4 (- 2 (- 3 (+ 6 (/ 4 5)))))) (* 3 (* (- 6 2) (- 2 7))))

and it tells me the result is wrong, but wolfram and my own REPL confirms the result.

vhf• 14 years ago

I came up with the same solution and had the same wrong result.

sur• 14 years ago

I think it expects you to combine the addition and multiplication, like this:

    (/ (+ 5 4 (- 2 (- 3 (+ 6 (/ 4 5))))) (* 3 (- 6 2) (- 2 7)))

zodiac10• 14 years ago

The autograder checks for (+ 5 4 (- 2 ...)), instead of nesting the additions. You can view the source to see the grader. I'm not sure how to make it accomodate all the ways it could be nested though.

BlackJack3• 14 years ago

Why not check the result and also check for the presence of parentheses? That way you can verify the result and make sure nobody's just copying and pasting in an answer.

One could easily do something like (-2.466..) as the answer, but given that you just need a simple way to verify answers, I think my strategy works well.

jQueryIsAwesome• 14 years ago

Normalize it and then check if it is equal; this took longer than I like to admit: http://jsfiddle.net/jeKMF/

arikrak• 14 years ago

If I ever get up to Scheme, I'm adding this to my chart of interactive resources for learning programming.

jyf19872• 14 years ago

well, i just planing to post a blog about interactive books, hmm , seems late

jyf19872• 14 years ago

ok, here is my suggestions:

1, add a on page chat for people, so they could help each other

2, add comment extension for the page, so people could add extra notes or corrects for your error :] , i saw those style here `http://hgbook.red-bean.com/read/a-tour-of-mercurial-the-basi...

3, if possible, DO develop an app for mobile device, so you could get income or reputation which could driven you to continue this greate initial and finally done the job

zodiac10• 14 years ago

Anyone have ideas for how best to show footnotes? The current version doesn't have them.

Show HN: Interactive SICP

Related Stories