Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - 2nd Edition (MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) 2nd Edition

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

182 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0262011532

ISBN-10: 0262011530

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Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has had a dramatic impact on computer science curricula over the past decade. This long-awaited revision contains changes throughout the text.

There are new implementations of most of the major programming systems in the book, including the interpreters and compilers, and the authors have incorporated many small changes that reflect their experience teaching the course at MIT since the first edition was published.

A new theme has been introduced that emphasizes the central role played by different approaches to dealing with time in computational models: objects with state, concurrent programming, functional programming and lazy evaluation, and nondeterministic programming. There are new example sections on higher-order procedures in graphics and on applications of stream processing in numerical programming, and many new exercises.

In addition, all the programs have been reworked to run in any Scheme implementation that adheres to the IEEE standard.

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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.

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.

Series: MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Hardcover: 657 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press; 2 edition (July 25, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0262011530
ISBN-13: 978-0262011532
Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.5 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
Average Customer Review: 182 customer reviews
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Jaime Silvela

The best programming book ever, if you're a certain kind of person

August 26, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This was the book that made me want to be a computer programmer. When I read it, I had no knowledge of programming beyond a little Pascal, and rudiments of C.
It had a massive impact on me. It consumed me, to the point where I had difficulty finishing assignments for my classes (I did not study CS as an undergrad). What the book does is give you a vocabulary and knowledge about programming that is hard to find anywhere else.

The text, the examples and exercises, have a mathematical flavor, and that may turn off many potential readers, who would rather gadget around than find elegant solutions for the 8-queens puzzle or efficient algorithms to compute Fibonacci numbers.

I've lent this book to several friends who were interested in learning to program, and in all cases they have returned it to me, saying it went over their heads.
There seem to be two camps in computer programming:
- the gadgeteers, who want to hook devices together and make them do fun things
- the scientists, who appreciate computing as a medium in itself
This book is for the second type.

Comment 42 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

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russ olsen

Wonderful but challenging book

August 5, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is one of those much admired, frequently discussed, oft purchased but rarely read classics. It's not an easy read: It took me four tries to get through it.

But it's worth the effort: By the time you are done you will know about imperative programming, functional programming, meta programming, lazy data structures and everything in between.

This is one book that should be on every programmer's list.

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Ikki Fenix

Great book. Has changed my perspective on the subject

December 31, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Great book. Has changed my perspective on the subject. I would classify it as an advanced book in the subject of computer programming. If you have a solid understanding of the fundamentals of computer science I recommend reading this book.

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B. Dean

Computer Science...Art?

January 27, 2009

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

You need it, too. I won't pretend to have more useful insight into the art and craft of programming, or into SICP's relationship to it, than Paul Graham or Peter Norvig- if you want to know which reviews to trust, look these cats up.

The discussion in the reviews usually concludes that this is the book that separates the computer scientists from the mere programmers. There is a definite logic to this. If you want a book that will have you churning out code that does something helpful in half an hour(because you don't think the several ways to calculate the Fibonacci Sequence are helpful), by all means, pick up Learning Perl or just read the Python documentation. They are great tools. If, however, you want to tool up on problem-solving technique a whole level or three higher up, SICP is for you. The Wizard Book is about learning to think better.

Here is where I diverge from the idea that this book is for only computer scientists, though. I am an artist, graduated from college with a BA in art, going to graduate school for an MFA. SICP is one of the books that changed how I work and think. It will make you a better programmer if you read (and reread (and reread)) it in the same way that learning Latin will make you understand language itself in a whole new way. I use ideas from SICP constantly, to design software, but also to design staircases. The book is slow-going, no doubt about it, but you'll have a whole new mental toolset at the end.

One caveat- this book is freely distributed in its entirety on MIT's website. I still bought a copy, though: who knows how long this internet thing will last, but SICP is going to be relevant forever.

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Christopher Silvia

Fantastic resource for learning basic lisp

August 21, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I've worked through the first three chapters of exercises, and they are challenging and fun. I'm learning scheme so that I can get better at functional programming in general, mostly in Clojure and Javascript. Scheme is a perfect "teaching language", though, and I think that this book should be any aspiring programmer's first introduction to programming before they even touch a compiled language.

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Nicholas Hoell

Good but Flawed

November 24, 2011

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

First of all, this book is quite good. That being said, the book suffers from a few flaws that make is less than easy-going for probably the majority of readers.

To start with, I'll mention that the choice of typesetting used in this book makes it a bit cluttered on the eyes. Although I readily admit things like this *shouldn't* matter, they invariably do. This really is the responsibility of the publisher and not the author but the end product is a book that can be a bit numbing to read for long periods (at least in my opinion).

Second and more seriously, the book is not a "stand-alone" item. For instance, to implement the "Picture Language" examples, one would need add-ons to the standard MIT-Scheme package that the authors refer to. In the problems on Data-Directed Programming focusing on association tables, the reader really is at a disadvantage in not having an implementation of the tables incorporated in the standard-issue MIT-scheme. They are constructed in Chapter 3 and this kind of "wait-and-see" makes the problems, in my opinion, harder than they really need to be. Also, the Object-Oriented Programming avoids (for understandable reasons) many of the technical features that highlight its robustness. It's not an ideal book for OOP.

SICP gives the reader (or I should say, it gave THIS reader) the impression that this is also not a book for people learning programming, it is a book for people comfortable enough with programming to deal with a lot of these issues quickly. If used in a class setting this is probably easily overcome in labs.

On to the strengths.

The problems in the book range from fairly trivial to quite difficult. One of the strengths of the book is that they introduce a lot of topics and do not shy away from interesting and challenging exercises. The bar is set probably quite high for the undergrads learning this material but for self-study some of the problems can be somewhat daunting.

Another strength, in my opinion, is what some reviewers cite as a weakness; the use of Scheme. Aside from the implementation issues above, Scheme is really well-suited (having few primitive control structures) to isolating the concepts of programming (in contradistinction to the emphasis on syntax that plagues most introductory books). The argument that Scheme is "useless" depends highly on your definition of "use", since solid understanding of program organization is a valuable language-free skill.

Overall, as I mentioned, the book is quite good. Just don't expect that because it is touted as an introductory text that it will be an easy read. There is something in it for everyone.

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