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Solving SICP by todsacerdoti

Solving SICP by todsacerdoti

7 Comments

  • Post Author
    loevborg
    Posted March 4, 2025 at 9:13 pm

    Wonderful report! So now we know how long it takes to solve all of the problems: 729 hrs.

    SICP is hard to work through even if you're just reading but wow, the exercises are on another level! I wonder how it compares to, say, a physics or biology textbook

  • Post Author
    wk_end
    Posted March 4, 2025 at 9:18 pm

    This is an interesting post in its way, but I hate how it's presented. The subject doesn't really call for this impersonation of academic rigor, since it's fundamentally an unscientific, subjective exercise – "How long did I, one particular computer scientist, take to work through this massive and occasionally open-ended task?" That's asking for an introspective essay, not a battery of tables and graphs.

    But I think this is a useful critique of SICP, for those trying to teach from it or in particular for those trying to self-study it: it wasn't really designed to be done front-to-back (contrary to the nonsensical justifications given here); it's not a realistic demand of any student, or even necessarily a particularly productive use of their time unless they intended to move into compiler development. Its problem sets occasionally give the illusion that SICP itself will teach you what you need to solve these incredibly difficult problems and perform these incredible accomplishments, which is partially what's responsible for its legendary status. Not recognizing that – and it'd be hard to blame a solo learner for that – can be incredibly discouraging when one finds that they can't do things with the tools SICP has given and blame themselves for not appreciating those tools rather than SICP for asking too much and giving too little.

  • Post Author
    0cf8612b2e1e
    Posted March 4, 2025 at 9:36 pm

    Is there a modern SICP book? I tried to go through it once, but immediately got stuck because my math/physics was so rusty that I would have to spend more time researching the background than actually solving the CS puzzle

  • Post Author
    noelwelsh
    Posted March 4, 2025 at 10:15 pm

    SICP is a sprawling book. It's been rightly criticised; it is inaccessible without a strong maths and (electronic) engineering background, it's somewhat unfocused, and its code is archaic. But it blew my mind some 20 years ago when I worked through it over many train journeys. A more focused, more accessible book would be objectively better, but I think it would lose something. SICP, with its wild rambling through so many disparate topics, really did leave me feeling that I could make the computer do anything.

  • Post Author
    fsdkfdsf
    Posted March 4, 2025 at 10:41 pm

    [dead]

  • Post Author
    mk12
    Posted March 4, 2025 at 10:47 pm

    Kudos for finishing it. I’ve gone on a similar quest with https://mk12.github.io/sicp, but I’m still on chapter 3. I keep getting distracted by new ways of improving the website rather than making progress in the book.

  • Post Author
    zeckalpha
    Posted March 5, 2025 at 3:07 am

    There's probably more nuance with 2.29 than is led onto here. The problem appears straightforward and there seems to be simpler solutions out there than the one described in the article.

    Did the author overthink it or are the simple solutions not correct?

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