Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Second Edition [Hardcover]

Harold Abelson (Author), Gerald Jay Sussman (Author), Julie Sussman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0070004846 | ISBN-13: 978-0070004849 | Edition: 2

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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 out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Hal Abelson is Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a fellow of the IEEE. He is a founding director of Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, and the Free Software Foundation. Additionally, he serves as co-chair for the MIT Council on Educational Technology.

Gerald Jay Sussman is Panasonic (formerly Matsushita) Professor of Electrical Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and the coauthor (with Hal Abelson) of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (MIT Press). --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 657 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Science/Engineering/Math; 2 edition (August 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0070004846
• ISBN-13: 978-0070004849
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.4 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (178 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #357,940 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #15 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > Lisp

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1,107 of 1,119 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Its the Best! Its the Worst! Why the split? May 8, 2000

By Peter Norvig

Format:Hardcover

I think its fascinating that there is such a split between those who love and hate this book. For most books, the review is a bell-shaped curve of star ratings; this one has a peak at 1, a peak at 5, and very little in between. How could this be? I think it is because SICP is a very personal message that works only if the reader is at heart a computer scientist (or willing to become one). So I agree that the book's odds of success are better if you read it after having some experience.

To use an analogy, if SICP were about automobiles, it would be for the person who wants to know how cars work, how they are built, and how one might design fuel-efficient, safe, reliable vehicles for the 21st century. The people who hate SICP are the ones who just want to know how to drive their car on the highway, just like everyone else.

Those who hate SICP think it doesn't deliver enough tips and tricks for the amount of time it takes to read. But if you're like me, you're not looking for one more trick, rather you're looking for a way of synthesizing what you already know, and building a rich framework onto which you can add new learning over a career. That's what SICP has done for me. I read a draft version of the book around 1982, when I was in grad school, and it changed the way I think about my profession. If you're a thoughtful computer scientist (or want to be one), it will change your life too.

Some of the reviewers complain that SICP doesn't teach the basics of OO design, and so on. In a sense they are right. The book doesn't directly tell you how to design and write an object-oriented program using the subset of object-oriented principles that show up in the syntax of Java or C++.... Rather, the book tells you what those principles are, how they came to be selected as worthwhile, how they can be implemented from the ground up, and how a different combination of principles might be more appropriate for some particular problems. This approach requires you to understand the range of possibilities, and to think about trade-offs as you go through the design process. Programming is a craft that is subject to frequent failure: many projects are started and abandoned because the designers do not have the flexibility, experience and understanding to come up with a suitable design and implementation. SICP gives you an approach that will succeed, but it is an approach based on principles and wisdom, not on a checklist. If you don't understand the principles, or if you are the kind of person who wants to be given a cookbook of what to do rather than to think creatively, or if you only want to work on problems that are pretty much like the problem you worked on last time, then this approach will not work for you. There are other approaches that will be more reproducible for a limited range of simple problems, but there is no better way than SICP to learn how to address the truly hard problems.

Donald Knuth says he wrote his books for "the one person in 50 who has this strange way of thinking that makes a programmer". I think the most amazing thing about SICP is that there are so FEW people who hate it: if Knuth were right, then only 1 out of 50 people would be giving this 5 stars, instead of about 25 out of 50. Now, a big part of the explanation is that the audience is self-selected, and is not a representative sample. But I think part of it is because Sussman and Abelson have succeeded grandly in communicating "this strange way of thinking" to (some but not all) people who otherwise would never get there. Read more ›

417 of 433 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Classic May 20, 2000

By paul graham

Format: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?

109 of 112 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding June 16, 1999

By Red

Format:Hardcover

The negative reviewers entirely missed the point of this book. The issues are not c++ versus scheme, nor the gap between the book's examples and real-world programs, nor that recursion is less intuitive than looping.

The real point is to teach some very core foundations of computer science that show up everywhere. For example, supposedly revolutionary XML looks a heck of a lot like a nested scheme list, first described in 1960. And processing an active server page (or Java server page) is very much like the textbook's specialized language evaluator. Finally, c++ polymorphism through vtables and part of Microsoft's COM mechanics are the exact same thing as the book's data-directed programming section.

This is very deep material for a programming newbie to learn outside a course, but for an experienced nerd who's looking for a systematic framework, it's absolutely terrific. I had done lots of lisp and compiler work before reading the book, so many of the concepts were not new. But it's with this framework in mind that I learn new technologies, and this approach greatly speeds up how long it takes to understand each week's "new" hot product/language/tool/mindset. Put another way: why do so many popular computer books take 1000 pages to describe a few trivial concepts?

71 of 74 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic book, but not for beginners November 25, 1999

By Michael Vanier

Format:Hardcover

The reviews of this book are just hilarious; I've never seen a book with reviews so sharply polarized between one and five stars. I think the reason for this is that most of the one-star reviewers had this book rammed down their throats in an introductory CS course, and it blew their minds. This doesn't surprise me; despite the fact that the book is meant to be an introduction to computer science, for most students it will be just too abstract and too difficult. I've been programming for over ten years, and I had to work really hard to understand a lot of the concepts presented here. Nevertheless, I think this is a great book because it discusses lots of ideas that receive inadequate or no coverage elsewhere. The material on compilers, for instance, is difficult (and idiosyncratic because they're compiling scheme, which has its own pecularities compared to, say, compiling C) but if you can work through it you get a pretty deep understanding of what's going on, without having to get bogged down in parsing or other trivial stuff. My suggestion: DO NOT read this book if you are just learning how to program; come back to it after a few years of experience and it will stretch your mind. Also, if you're having trouble I recommend Harvey and Wright's "Simply Scheme" as a much gentler introduction to the same material.